A statement made to a Magistrate holding an inquest under Section 176, Criminal Procedure Code, is admissible under Section 21 of the Evidence Act.

Mack, J.- The two appellants, who incidentally bear the same name, have been found guilty under section 302, Indian Penal Code, of the murder of Sellappa Reddiar, an elderly man in the early hours of the 17th of May, 1951, on a pathway leading from Paravoi village to Ariyalur, the nearest centre with a District Munsiff’s Court and regular lawyers.

2. The prosecution case is that the 1st accused and the deceased were proceeding together from their village of Vedakkalur to Ariyalur via Paravoi where they halted for some hours on the night of the 16th of May, 1951. They left Paravoi together in the early hours of the 17th of August, when about 1½ miles from Paravoi, the 2nd accused with implements for murder and burial by prior arrangement with the 1st accused came on the scene. Sellappa Reddiar was killed on the pathway and then buried about half a furlong away. It was not till the 24th of May seven days later that his body was dug up.

3. The motive centres round the deceased’s young wife Bangaru Ammal P.W. 2, now aged 18, whom he is said to have married when over 40 when she was only about nine years old. This girl came from a poor family of Paravoi. The 2nd accused is her elder brother. She grew into an attractive young woman and like the precious metal after which she was named and she was according to the prosecution case destined to lure men to murder and destruction. She joined her husband, who lived in Vedakkalur about six mites from Paravoi, about 3 or 4 years ago. It was not long before she and the 1st accused aged 30, a married man with two children, who owned a cattle-shed near the deceased’s house became enamoured of each other. There is plenty of evidence including that of Bangaru Ammal herself as P.W. 2 to show that they were on terms of illicit intimacy in which Sellappa Reddiar ultimately acquiesced and he was at the time of the offence on terms of ostensible friendship with the first accused. The deceased appeared content so long as his wife stayed in his house, but about three months prior to the offence, she went to her mother’s house at Paravoi where very soon she struck up illicit intimacy with one Sivalinga Padayachi (P.W. 3) a friend of her brother, the 2nd accused Though she herself deposed that P.W. 3 was only a friend, P.W. 3 himself admitted intimacy with this young woman. So we have instead of the usual triangle, a quadrangle of a foolish old husband, a very young and attractive wife and two of her paramours.

4. The immediate motive so far as the 2nd accused is concerned relates to property. Sellappa Reddiar had settled on Bangaru Ammal a house and some land. The deed has not been filed. Incensed at her leaving him, he sold 2½ cents of this land under Ex. P-1 dated 7th May, 1951, to P.W. 9, who has also deposed to strained relations between the deceased and his young wife for about two years, and her periodic absence at Paravoi where the 1st accused used to visit her. There is no reason to disbelieve the evidence of P.W. 9 that deceased told him he wanted to cancel the settlement deed and asked P.W. 9 for a letter to his advocate at Ariyalur. It was while the deceased was on his way to Ariyalur accompanied by the 1st accused to instruct an advocate that he was, according to the prosecution case, killed. Paravoi is six miles from Vedakkalur and about 11 miles from Ariyalur. The route from Paravoi is by a pathway between 4 and 5 miles long which joins the main Perambalur-Ariyalur road. There is, in the first place, ample evidence to show that deceased locked up his house at Vedakkalur on Thursday, the 16th of May, handed over the key to a Muslim woman, P.W. 8, and left the village along with the 1st accused, his wife and two children in a bullock cart. P.W. 8 understood that they were both going to Ariyalur. The deceased did not return again and after the corpse was found, she handed over the key to the village magistrate. P.W. 1 who is married to the deceased’s brother’s daughter, is the only m