JUDGMENT

L. MOHAPATRA, J. — The appellant having been convicted for offences committed under Secs. 302/201 of the Penal Code, has preferred this appeal.

2. Case of the prosecution is that deceased is the wife of the appellant and they were residing in their own house along with their three sons Ramesh Chandra Chinera (PW 1), Pradip Kumar Chinera (PW 2) and another in village Rajsunakhala. The appellant suspected his wife to be involved in extra-marital relationship for which he was ill-treating her. In the night of occurrence the appellant, deceased and their sons went to bed as usual and early in the morning the dead body of the deceased was found on her bed. Brother of the appellant Madan Mohan Chinera who was also residing in the same village on getting information about death of the deceased, came to the house of the appellant and being suspicious about the cause of death the matter was reported in Bankoi Out Post and a U.D. case was registered. PW 8 took over charge of investigation whereafter same was handed over to PW 9, Circle Inspector of Police, Khurda. After completion of investi¬gation, charge-sheet was submitted for offences alleged to have been committed under Secs. 302/201 of the Penal Code and the appellant faced the trial.

3. The plea of the appellant is complete denial of his involvement in the alleged offences and the appellant retracted his confession said to have been made by him before the learned Magistrate under Sec. 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. He further stated in his statement recorded under Sec. 313, Cr.P.C. that he was forced to make such a confession before the learned Magistrate.

4. Learned Additional Sessions Judge solely on the basis of the judicial confession convicted the appellant and sentenced him to undergo rigorous imprisonment for life for conviction under Sec. 302 of the Penal Code and rigorous imprisonment for three years for conviction under Sec. 201 of the Penal Code.

5. Learned counsel appearing for the appellant has chal¬lenged the judgment mainly on two grounds :

(1) The Magistrate before whom the appellant is supposed to have made a confession has not been examined and therefore, the confession cannot be accepted. He further argued that the re¬quirements as envisaged in law before recording confession have not been followed by the learned Magistrate which necessiated his examination and time for reflection was never allowed to the appellant to decide as to whether he should make a confession or not.

(2) The confession having been retracted, the Court should have looked for some corroboration from other sources and in absence of any corroboration the learned Additional Sessions Judge could not have convicted the appellant solely on the basis of retracted judicial confession.

6. So far as the first ground taken by the learned counsel for appellant is concerned it is required to look into the con¬fessional statement to find out as to whether proper procedure has been adopted by the learned Magistrate while recording con¬fession or not. Ext. 6 is the confessional statement of the appellant. From the said document it appears that the appellant was produced before the learned Magistrate by the C.S.I. Refer¬ring to the said endorsement in the confessional statement it was argued by the learned counsel for appellant that the appellant had not been kept out of police influence before the confessional statement was recorded. We are not able to accept such a conten¬tion as the Court has to see whether before recording the confes¬sional statement the accused was kept out of police influence or not, and if the accused had been given time for reflection in absence of influence of any source, merely because he was pro¬duced before the Magistrate by the C.S.I., the confessional statement cannot be ignored. From the confessional statement we find that required questions as envisaged under law had been asked to the appellant and the appellant confessed stating that his wife was having phys