JUDGMENT
Waikar, J.
1. The appellant, having been convicted of the offence punishable under Section 302 of the I.P.C. and sentenced to undergo imprisonment for life, has preferred this appeal.
2. The appellant was serving as a Police Constable at Bhadrawati, District Chandrapur. He was living with his wife Nani alias Laxmi, one son and two daughters in the rented premises consisting of only one room owned by Soni (P.W. 1). The landlady Soni was residing in the adjoining room with her husband and two sons, one of them being Vitthal (P.W. 2), aged about 12 years. The parents of the appellant were residing in close vicinity, only two houses away from the residence of the appellant. The appellant is the maternal cousin of Soni, the landlady. He had come to reside in these rented premises only a month before this occurrence. On the night of 27th/28th December, 1980, Laxmi, the wife of the appellant, met with a gruesome homicidal death in her own house with multiple stab injuries. The autopsy report shows that there were as many as ten incised injuries, all on vital parts. It was a slovenly butchery, to say the least. At 3.00 a.m., on 28-12-1980, the appellant visited the Police Station and lodged his First Information Report. The appellant was on leave at the material time. All these facts are not in dispute.
3. The crucial question for consideration is whether it was this appellant who could be held responsible for this brutal and cruel murder of his wife. The prosecution depends solely on circumstantial evidence. What is alleged is that at midnight, Soni heard Vandana, the daughter of the appellant, aged about 5 years, shouting by her name and saying that her father was assaulting her mother. Soni came out of her house and asked the appellant to open the door, but as the appellant did not respond nor opened the door, she went to the house of the parents of the appellant. The mother of the appellant came, whereafter the appellant opened the door and came out. He handed over his daughter Bali to his mother and asked her to look after the child and so saying he left for the Police Station.
4. As stated earlier, the appellant lodged the report at 3.00 a.m., and an offence under Section 302 I.P.C. was registered and the appellant was arrested. It is alleged that the appellant volunteered to show the dead body of his wife, the concerned dagger, the blood-stained jersey and the blood-mixed water. The memorandum to that effect was recorded in the presence of the panchas and the appellant then led them to his own house and showed the dead, body of his wife having multiple stab injuries, the dagger, which was kept on the wooden cupboard, the bloodstained jersey and the water mixed with blood in a brass pot. A sample of that water was taken in a bottle. An inquest was drawn on the dead body and the rest of the articles were seized. The report of the Chemical Analyser shows that human blood was found on the jersey and also in the water. No blood, however, was detected on the dagger. Upon these circumstances and the evidence, the appellant was put up for his trial for the offence under Section 302 I.P.C.
5. The defence of this appellant was that he returned home after seeing second show of the picture, “Burning Train”, and found his wife with multiple injuries lying in a pool of blood. He took his two daughters and on the way, handed them over to his mother and he himself proceeded, to the Police Station arid lodged the report. He denied, having made any confession leading to discovery of these articles. His blood stained jersey, according to him, was lying on the bed near the dead body.
6. The learned Sessions Judge catalogued six circumstances in para 16 of his judgment which in his opinion, fairly and squarely brought home the guilt to this appellant and he convicted and sentenced him as aforesaid.
7. Now, admittedly, besides his wife, the only inmates of his family were two daughters and one son. The prosecution did not examine them nor examined, the mother of the appellant who, admittedly, happened to come to the house at night to whom this appellant handed over his child before proceeding to the Police Station. The witness of pivotal importance in this case is Soni (P.W. 1). In her statement under Section 162 of the Cr.P.C., she had stated certain facts calculated to bring the appellant perilously closer to the crime. She had stated about frequent quarrels between this couple. She further stated that when she went to the house of the accused, she saw him standing with a dagger in his hand and saying that he was fed up with usual daily quarrels. When her attention was drawn to these statements by the prosecution, she denied having made them. It is obvious that she was trying to suppress certain facts which could bring disaster to the appellant. Regard being had to the fact that she was related to him as his cousin that was her natural anxiety. But we are not prepared to throw her entire testimony overboard, for, admittedly, being a next-door neighbour, her presence was natural. Further the fact that at that unearthly hour of the night, the mother of the appellant did appear near his house, is admitted even by the appellant, and that itself provides an internal corroboration to her testimony when she states that she had gone to the parents of the accused and it was at her instance that the mother of the accused had come up to the house of the accused.
8. All her evidence, which remains unmistakable at the close of her cross-examination, is that she heard Vandana, the daughter of the appellant, calling her by her name and shouting that her father was assaulting her mother and that she came to the house of the accused and asked hurt to open the door but there was no response, whereafter she went to his parents’ house and narrated the incident to his mother. The mother of the accused came to his house. Though in her examination-in-chief she had stated that the accused opened the door and came out when his mother called him, during her cross-examination she stated that he met them on the way as they were coming. She was asked during cross-examination whether she had told the Police when her statement was recorded that Vandana called her by her name and shouted that her father was assaulting her mother. Apart from the fact that she answered in the negative, we wonder, how such a question could at all be permissible. There was no omission of such a statement in her statement under Section 162 Cr.P.C. and it was unfair and misleading to put such a question. Be that as it may; her positive evidence in her examination-in-chief stands neither impaired nor shaken by eliciting a negative answer to suck a question.
9. Shri Daga’s criticism to this evidence is that since it is not corroborated by Vandana and the mother of the appellant, it cannot be read in evidence. It is not known whether Vandana, aged 5 years, or the mother of the appellant were interrogated during investigation or not. This evidence of Soni (P.W. 1) could not be said to be inadmissible. It is certainly admissible as direct evidence as to what she actually heard. The learned Sessions Judge, therefore, rightly accepted and relied upon this part of evidence.
10. Here, the maker of the F.I.R. being the accused himself, the law on point is well-settled that no part of the confessional statement is admissible except to the extent it is admissible under Section 27 of the Evidence Act. All that is important and relevant therefore, is that at 3.00 a.m. at night, the appellant-accused visited the Police Station and lodged a report signed by him in respect of the murder of his wife. P.S.I. Tiwari (P.W. 7) and the panch witness Manohar (P.W. 4) stated that the accused made a statement and promised to discover certain things, vide Exhibit-10. In pursuance of that statement, he led them to his house showed the dead body of his wife, the knife kept on the shelf, the blood-stained jersey on the bed and the blood-mixed water in the brass pot. There is nothing to show that even without such a discovery being made by the appellant-accused, the police already knew the whereabouts of these things. The only discrepancy that would be pointed out is that though Manohar (P.W. 4) in his examination-in-chief stated that water from the pot was taken in a bottle, in his cross-examination he stated that it was taken in a glass to the police station where it was transferred to a bottle. The report of the Chemical Analyser shows that these articles were received in a duly sealed condition. Agreeing, therefore, with the finding of the learned Sessions Judge, we are inclined to hold that the discovery of these articles and the seizure thereof do not suffer from any serious infirmity and they are duly proved. Since no blood was detected on the knife pointed out by the appellant kept on the shelf, it cannot be said that it was the discovery of any incriminating article. Human blood, however was detected on the jersey and the water stored in the brass pot. These are significant and important discoveries, indeed.
11. It was submitted by Shri Daga that in a case of circumstantial evidence, existence of motive is very important, and the prosecution in this case was unable to adduce any evidence on the point and as such an important chain in circumstantial evidence is, therefore, missing. True, it is that motive in such a case plays an important part but, the law is not that in the absence of proof of motive, other circumstances, howsoever clear and clinching, can under no circumstances bring home the guilt to the appellant-accused. After all, motive is something which is locked up in the heart of the culprit and sometimes it would not be possible to have any trace of it. The law on circumstantial evidence is clear and we need not restate it. Suffice it to say that all the circumstances established must unerringly point to the guilt of the accused and that they must be consistent and consistent with the guilt and inconsistent with the innocence of the accused. What is important is the cumulative effect of all the circumstances. It cannot be said that since no motive is established, the chain is broken and the prosecution must fail. Wills in his book ‘An Essay on The principles of Circumstantial Evidence (Indian Edn)’ on page 557, remarked :
“The effect of a body of circumstantial evidence is sometimes compared to that of a chain, but the metaphor is inaccurate, since the weakest part of a chain is also its strongest. Such evidence is more aptly to be compared to a rope made up of many strands twisted together. The rope has strength more than sufficient to bear the stress laid upon, it though no one of the filaments of which it is composed would be sufficient for the purpose.”
These remarks bring out a clear relief what is known as the cumulative effect of totality of the circumstances. In the present case, when the appellant-accused says, he was out till about 2.00 a.m. and returned home from a cinema-show, he verily puts forth a plea of alibi and besides his bare word, there is nothing to show that he was really not in the house. The appellant-accused realised the necessity of taking such a plea obviously because the normal presumption that he was in his house at that hour of the night would be drawn against him. If this plea of alibi is rejected, it would be reasonable to presume that he was at his house that night and this by itself would be a material circumstance against him to begin with. The burden, if any on the prosecution in fact, stands discharged by this presumption and it was certainly for the appellant-accused, to prove his plea of alibi. The evidence of Soni, which we are prone to accept, that she heard the cries of Vandana that her father was beating her mother and that when she came to the house of the appellant and asked him to open the door, there was no response, explodes the plea of alibi of the appellant.
12. Now, the house of the parents of the appellant was close-by with only two houses intervening in between. Soni went up to that house and was returning with the mother of the appellant when the appellant met them with his daughter on the way. What is argued and sought to be suggested is that during the interval, the possibility of the real culprit, who might be inside, going away and the appellant making his entry, could not be ruled out. In the nature of things, the interval could not be very long, and what is the conduct of the appellant when he met his mother and Soni ? When ordinarily a person to such a situation would have bawled, shouted, raised cries and would have told the first person he came across on the way about such a calamity that had fallen on him, the appellant was calm and composed and without saying anything even to his mother proceeded to the Police Station. The possibility of any culprit making his exit and the appellant making his entry during that brief interval like two actors on the stage is only imaginary and puerile judged in the light of the subsequent conduct of the appellant which, in our opinion, is wholly inconsistent with the conduct of an innocent and consistent only with the conduct of a guilty man.
13. Coupled with this is the evidence of discovery of the blood-stained jersey of the appellant and the blood-mixed water in the brass vessel and find of the dead body in his house at his own instance. What is submitted is that had the police visited his house, these articles could easily be found there even without any statement of the appellant. Now, once the confessional part of the long report lodged by the accused is to be excluded from consideration and the only fact admissible being that the appellant visited the Police Station and lodged the report in respect of a cognizable offence, viz., the murder of his wife, it cannot be said that the police already knew or could know about the dead-body and about these articles being in the house of the appellant. It is pertinent to note that the dead body, as per the inquest, was lying in a supine position just near the front door. The Constable’s jersey, which admittedly belonged to the appellant, was not near or on the dead body as would be clear from the inquest panchanama. Therefore, the possibility of the jersey being kept near the dead body and getting soiled with blood lying there, has to be ruled out. The find of the human blood on the jersey of the appellant and in the drinking water kept in the brass pot, which was only within the knowledge of the appellant when he went to lodge a report, are circumstances which must stare the appellant fully in his face. All these circumstances, therefore, point unerringly to his guilt.
14. The cumulative effect of the above circumstances, though not many, is that the appellant and the appellant alone and none else committed the murder of his wife that night. The conviction of the appellant-accused, therefore, in our opinion, is proper and calls for no interference. The appeal is, therefore, dismissed.
15. Appeal dismissed.
