Chennai: The Madras high court has upheld an order of the trial court, convicting and sentencing an accused to life imprisonment for murdering a woman, after watching blue film and attempting to have sexual intercourse with her.
A division bench comprising Justices S.Vaidyanathan and N.Anand Venkatesh dismissed the appeal filed by the accused Ravikumar, challenging the order of the Principal Sessions Judge, Madurai dated February 28, 2017.
“Considering the totality of the circumstances and the ocular testimony adduced on the side of the prosecution, we are of the view that there is no prima facie ground raised in the memorandum of appeal to interfere with the judgment of the trial court and no mercy can be shown to the accused in this case”, the bench added.
The case of the prosecution was that on April 19, 2013, the accused, after watching a blue film in the house of one Selvam, had entered into the house of the deceased and started misbehaving with her. Since the deceased refused to adhere to his sexual desire, he attacked her with Aruval on her right neck, right side head, right ear and other parts of the body and caused her death, which resulted in registration of an FIR.
Dismissing the appeal, the bench said the main contention of the accused was that when there was no window marked in the rough sketch prepared by the investigating officer, the evidence of the neighbour, on the basis of which, the punishment was imposed on the appellant, ought to be discarded. The neighbour had categorically stated in the chief examination that upon hearing a sound from the house of the deceased, she noticed through the window that the accused had pushed down the deceased and thereafter, attacked the deceased with Aruval. However, in her cross examination, she had deposed that there was a hole on the door of the deceased’s house and therefore, an inference can be drawn that she would have noticed the occurrence through that hole. It was further deposed that the house of the deceased was situated adjacent to her house and any person, who wants to visit the deceased has to pass through her house and thus the evidence of the neighbour was inevitable in this case and the question of discarding her evidence does not arise at all, the bench added.
The bench said both the owner of the house and the neighbour categorically stated that the accused came down in the stairs of the house of the deceased with Aruval and the owner was scared of resisting the accused.
It was quite natural that if a person was armed with a weapon, it was highly unsafe to go near to that person on account of fear and therefore, the conduct of the owner and neighbour in not raising any hue and cry cannot be said to be unnatural. What the court wants to ascertain was whether the version of the witnesses gets corroborated by the medical evidence. From their evidence, it was crystal clear that it was the accused, who ran out of the house of the deceased with Aruval and on his exit, they immediately went inside the house and saw the dead body of the deceased with severe injuries and it was the owner of the house, who covered the naked body of the deceased with saree. From the evidence of the doctor who conducted post mortem, it could be easily understood that the deceased had died on account of infliction of several cut injuries, and thus, the deposition given by the owner and neighbour was duly proved/corroborated with the medical evidence, the bench added.
