Judgement

JAGANNADHADAS, J. : This is an appeal by special leave. The appellant Deonandan Mishra (Deonandan Misir.) who was a stenographer to the Inspecting Assistant Commissioner of Income-tax, Patna, has been convicted under S. 302, Penal Code, for having committed the murder of his second wife, Mst. Parbati Devi, on the night of the 3rd/4th September, 1953 and sentenced to transportation for life. The deceased was married to the appellant in or about the year 1941 and was his second wife.

As appeals from the subsequent events, she was considered to be a woman of loose morals. She appears to have been forsaken by her husband as also by her father in or about the year 1945 and to have sought shelter in the Anath Ashram at Gaya. Through the intervention of the Secretary of the Ashram and with the consent of both the husband and the father, she got re-married to one Nand Lall of Punjab in December, 1945. After a stay of about an year and a half with Nand Lall in Punjab, she appears to have left him on account of alleged ill-treatment.

She came back to the Anath Ashram at Gaya in June, 1947, but left it again in October, 1947. What happened thereafter is not clear from the evidence and her whereabouts between October, 1947 and August, 1953, are not known and do not seem to have been traced. All that appears is that for some time prior to the date of the murder, she was found going up and down in places near about Gaya and that particularly on the 2nd and 3rd September, 1953, i.e., two days prior to her murder she was found going between Gaya and Patna and a place Chakand in between these two places.

Early morning at about 7 A.M. on the 4th September, 1953 , P. W.10, Havildar, found a naked dead body of a female lying in the Kabristhan at the outskirts of Gaya about a mile and a half from the police thana. It was lying on the western verandah of the bungalow of the Kabristhan with a number of cut injuries on the neck and on other parts of the body. Report of this was carried to the police and the body was subsequently identified to be that of Parbati Devi, the second wife of the appellant.

Investigation followed and the appellant was arrested on the 6th September,1953, and put up for trial in due course.

2. There is no eye-witness to the murder and the case against the a appellant depends entirely on circumstantial evidence. The standard of proof required to convict a person on such evidence is well-established by a series of decisions of this Court, of which it is sufficient to mention - Hanumant v. State of Madhya Pradesh , AIR 1952 SC 343 (A). This standard requires that the circumstances relied upon must be fully established and that the chain of evidence furnished by these circumstances should be so far complete as not to leave any reasonable ground for a conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused.

The learned counsel for the appellant has, therefore, strenuously contended before us that the circumstances relied on have not been fully established, and that in any case they are not enough to bring the offence home to the accused. The various circumstances relied upon have, therefore, to be briefly noticed.

3. The appellant belongs to a place called Chakand-dih about a mile and a half from a railway station called Chakand, which is in between Patna and Gaya and which is about five miles from Gaya. It is in evidence that the deceased woman was seen alighting at the Chakand railway station on the night of the 2nd September,1953, at about l0-15 P.M. from a train proceeding from Gaya to Patna and that after so alighting she was found proceeding to the village Chakanddih. It is also in evidence that she took the train again early next morning at Chakand for Patna.

The evidence further shows that on the 3rd morning at about 10 o clock, she presented herself at the Income-tax Office at Patna, and made enquiries about the appellant from a peon of the office, P. W. 12, and that the appellant was informed about this by him. On rec