In Re: Palaniswami Goundan

Govinda Menon, J.—The appellant has been convicted for having murdered his wife pappayammal and his father Chinnappa Goundan and

caused injuries to his son Perumal with the intention of causing his death. For the double murder he has been sentenced to death by the learned

Sessions Judge. There can be no doubt whatever on the evidence before the lower Court, that it was due to the injuries inflicted by the appellant

that both Pappayammal and Chinnappa Goundan died. It was also the appellant who inflicted the injuries on Perumal which might have proved

fatal, P.W. 1 is an eye-witness to the whole incident. She speaks to the fact that it was while she was at the scene of crime that the appellant

hacked to death his wife Pappayammal. Chinnappa Goundan, the father who was outside on a cot was next attacked by the appellant and in a

very brutal manner injuries were inflicted which proved fatal also. P.W. 5 the mother of the appellant speaks to what P.W. 1 told her as well as to

what happened immediately before the commission of the crime. P.Ws. 2 and 3 speak to the appellant cutting Perumal but were not witnesses to

the inflicting of injuries on Papayammal or Chinnappa Goundan. Immediately after these injuries were inflicted P.W. 4 saw the appellant coming out

with an aruval in his hand. There is further evidence that the appellant was disarmed by persons who came immediately on the scene and tied to a

tree.

The defence of the appellant was a version which cannot be accepted at all. What he said was that he found his child Perumal weeping at the

threshold of his house and took up the boy in his hands when his maternal uncle''s son Falani Goundan stood inside the house armed with a knife.

The appellant immediately ran away into the street when Appachi Goundan and others caught him. Palani Goundan aimed the knife at him when it

struck Perumal on the neck. He was then caught and beaten and the weapon was placed in his hands.

There is no suggestion or defence as to how the wife Papayammal and his father Chinnappa. Goundan came by their death. The learned

Sessions Judge has rejected this plea of the appellant as puerile and unworthy of any credence and we entirely agree with the learned Judge. It is

unnecessary for us to discuss in any detail the details of the incident as spoken to by the various witnesses adverted to by us above. Suffice it for

the purpose of this case to say that we entirely agree with the learned Judge that the witnesses are speaking the truth and their version is entirely

acceptable. We are therefore of opinion that the appellant caused the death of his wife and father and inflicted injuries on his son Perumal which

might have proved fatal. It cannot be said that he has let in evidence to show the state of mind at the time when he committed the offence and no

plea of insanity has been alleged and proved before the lower Court. The offence cannot be anything but murder. We are therefore of opinion that

the Sessions Judge was perfectly right in convicting the appellant of the offence u/s 302 I.P.C., for the murder of his wife and father and Section

307, for attempting to cause the death of his child Perumal.

The only point that requires consideration is whether the extreme penalty of the law should be inflicted in the circumstances of the case. The

learned sessions Judge himself was of opinion that the acts of the appellant were hardly those of a normal and sane person. There was no motive

disclosed in the evidence as to why those ghastly and brutal murders should have taken place. The evidence of the appellant''s mother P.W. 5 was

to the effect that the appellant and his wife were not quarrelling and they were leading normal lives. Nothing has been elicited as to why the

appellant should have murdered his own father or attempted to kill his child Perumal. There is evidence elicited in the cross-examination of P.W. 5

that the appellant used to sit often with a dazed and vacant look during the period he was not working. At that time he would not talk to any one.

Those things indicate that the appellant did not have the normal mentality of an ordinary and sane person and though it cannot be predicated from

the evidence that he was unsound or that he did not know the nature of the act as well as the circumstance that he did not know that he was

committing a crime, it may be said that some kind of hallucination or frenzy might have been working in his mind and such being the case it seems

to us that the ends of justice would be met if the sentence of death is reduced to one of transportation for life. We feel that the murder must have

been committed in some frenzied mood or something in the nature of an abnormal state of mind. Subject to the above modification the appeal is

dismissed.