Hyderabad High Court: If there’s no intention to kill, it’s not murder

HYDERABAD: If there is no previous animosity or intention or motive for the accused to kill a person, the courts will scale down the offence to the one under Section 304 Part I (punishment for causing death by negligence) and not the one of murder under Section 302 IPC (punishment for murder). Accordingly, the conviction and sentence recorded against the accused by the trial courts for the offence punishable under Section 302 IPC will be altered by the appellate courts to the one under Section 304 Part-I of IPC.

In one such case before the Hyderabad High Court, the appellant-accused challenged the judgment of the Mahila Sessions Judge, Vijayawada in convicting and sentencing him to life imprisonment for the offence punishable under Sections 302 and 498-A of IPC (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty).

The case of the prosecution was that the marriage between the accused and the deceased took place in 2004 and they were blessed with a son and a daughter out of wedlock. After living happily together for around two years, the accused got habituated to drinking alcohol and started harassing his wife physically as well as mentally.

The accused had also suspected her fidelity. Whenever there were disputes between the two, the woman used to inform her father and mother, who would convince her and send her back to her husband. On the day of the incident, the husband came home drunk and picked a quarrel with her.

The neighbours did not interfere since it was a regular affair. At about 12.30 after midnight, the neighbours noticed the man leaving the house along with his son. On the next day morning, the house owner found that the woman was lying dead on the floor and her daughter was by her side.
Basing on a complaint lodged by her father, police registered a case and took up investigation. The post-mortem report stated that the cause of death was smothering. The case was registered under Sections 302 and 498-A of IPC. The accused later surrendered to the police and wanted to be tried.

After appreciating the oral evidence and the extra-judicial confession made by the accused before the local VRO, the sessions judge convicted and sentenced him to life imprisonment for the offences punishable under Sections 302 and 498-A of IPC. Challenging it, he filed an appeal before the High Court.

The counsel for the appellant-accused submitted that there were no direct witnesses to the incident and the entire case rests on circumstantial evidence. The circumstances relied upon by the prosecution did not form a chain of events so as to connect the accused with the crime.

Even the prosecution witnesses had stated that there were no quarrels between the accused and the deceased, and so it cannot be said that the accused had any motive or intention to kill his wife.
If the contents of the extra-judicial confession were taken into consideration, the incident took place when the wife refused to fulfil his lust, the accused got angry and strangulated her.

On the other hand, the public prosecutor submitted that the evidence of the witnesses showed that the accused alone was responsible for the commission of offence. The circumstances relied upon by the prosecution did form a chain of events so as to connect the accused with the crime.

A division bench of the High Court comprising justices C Praveen Kumar and K Vijaya Lakshmi felt that the accused never had any intention to kill his wife. “In the absence of any earlier disputes between the accused and the deceased and in view of the admissions elicited, it can be said that there was no animosity or intention or motive for the accused to kill the deceased.

The incident occurred when the deceased refused to fulfil his sexual desire”, the bench observed and allowed the appeal in part by altering the conviction and sentence given by the sessions judge to the one under Section 304 Part-I IPC, and sentenced the appellant to rigorous imprisonment for a period of 10 years.