In Re: Rajagopala Aiyangar

This is a most tragic case in which the appellant, one Rajagopala Aiyangar aged 30, has been found guilty of clubbing his wife and four children

shortly after midnight in their house in Kivalur. The four children clubbed murderously on their heads with an iron pestle succumbed to their injuries,

but his wife Mathuravalli survived. She had eight injuries mainly on the head and face with suspected fracture of the skull. After sometime in

hospital she was discharged with the wounds healed, but her mental faculties impaired, and, according to Dr. Mrs. Mathew, unable to say anything

about her family or what happened to her children. She was not examined as a witness in this case. The learned Sessions Judge of East Tanjore

has found the appellant guilty of the quadruple murder of his four children and sentenced him to death. He also found him guilty u/s 307, I.P.C., of

attempting to murder his wife and sentenced him to transportation for life.

The facts of this distressing case are perfectly clear. Two neighbours, P. Ws. 1 and 2, were awakened after midnight by noises and groans from

this house and came out to find appellant standing at the threshold or his house with an iron pestle, M. O. 1. in his hand. They both say he told

them ""I have closed all, but I cannot bring myself to kill the small child"" and pointed to his youngest daughter aged 2 standing near him. P.Ws. 1

and 2 immediately went to the police station. The Sub-Inspector, P.w. 12, found one of the children dead and sent Mathuravalli and the three

other children who were alive to the Negapattinam hospital, where the children succumbed to their injuries. Their heads were all crushed by blows

from this pestle.

Appellant made no attempt to deny his guilt. In the lower Court he merely said that all the evidence against him was true. At the Sessions trial he

also said he had nothing to say and made no attempt to explain his horrifying con duct.

Appellant was a clerk in the Indian Bank drawing Rs. 120 a month. He also had some property -- lands and a house said to be worth about Rs.

25,000. The evidence shows that he was to all outward appearances happily married to his wife by whom he had no less than six children. The

eldest daughter was fortunately staying with a relation. The other five children, a son aged 10 and four daughters aged 8, 6, 4 and 2 were sleeping

in their house that night. Not a vestige of suspicion in the evidence attaches to Mathuravalli''s chastity. Absolutely no motive is disclosed as to why

the appellant should have suddenly at midnight set about clubbing his wife and all his children with the obvious intention of doing away with them.

The evidence of P. Ws. 1 and 2, we see no grounds for rejecting in any single particular, that when they saw him standing outside his threshold

with this pestle he told them words to the effect that he had killed them all, but could not bring himself to kill his youngest daughter. This conduct by

itself clearly shows that appellant knew what he was doing and it makes any plea of insanity u/s 84, I.P.C., out of the question. The conviction of

the appellant u/s 302, I.P.C., is correct and is confirmed.

As regards motive we have laboured in this case to find - anything suggestive of any motive for these ghastly and apparently inexplicable

murders. We have even searched the case diary and we find there this record of what the accused said to the police when first examined to see if it

contains anything which could be used in his favour. The case diary extracts reads as follows:

The accused was examined in detail. He stated that he is living in Kivalur for the last two years and he was originally godown keeper at Kivalur

and he is now transferred to Tiruvarur and he handed over charge of the keys of the godowns and there was some shortage and so he was in

trouble over the shortage of keys and he stopped there and did not speak anything coherently afterwards. He is not communicative and he does

not speak properly.

Further investigation brought nothing to light as regards any irregularity in his Bank work. We are even prepared to assume that he was worried

over some bank affairs, but we cannot find in this anything by way of extenuating circumstances.

The learned Advocate for the appellant has drawn our attention to a series of decisions in not dissimilar cases on the basis of which in cases of

multiple murders of this kind the most lenient treatment has been accorded to them on the basis of an inference of temporary mental derangement

from the motiveless nature of the crime committed. As we were unable to agree with this treatment accorded to such cases we have traced them to

their source which appears to be a judgment of 1886 in ''Queen Empress v. Lakshman Dagdu'', 10 Bom 612 by Birdwood and Jardine, JJ., of the

Bombay High Court. That was a case in which an accused person brutally killed his two young children with a hatchet after having been ill with

fever for several days. His wife who gave evidence said he became bewildered and unconscious when fever came on. The Sessions Judge

sentenced him to death. In appeal the learned Bombay Bench referred to a case in ''Reg v. Greensmith'', Med Chir. Rev. Vol. 28 p. 84, in which

Greensmith was charged with the murder of four of his children. Reference was made to ''Taylor''s Jurisprudence, 6th Edition, page 926'', as

authority for Greensmith being subsequently respited on the ground of insanity on the active interference of a Dr. Blake and others. There was

reference in that judgment to an observation by Dr. Taylor to the following effect:

It may be a dangerous doctrine to adduce the ''crime'' or the mode of perpetrating it, as ''evidence'' of insanity; but such cases as these

incontestably prove that there are some instances in which this is almost the only procurable evidence.

Holding that the case before them was similar to that in Greensmith''s case the learned Judges made a recommendation to Government for

commutation while passing the lesser sentence of transportation for life. This decision was followed with approval in 1896 in Queen Empress v.

Kadar Nasyer Shah'' 23 Cal 604 in the case of a man who had strangled a boy aged 8 whom he was bringing up. In a case decided by a learned

Bench of the Patna High Court in 1937 in ''Emperor v. Gedka Goala'', 16 Pat 333 Goala attacked his own family with a knife, and killed his wife,

two daughters and a son. In that case he was acquitted by the Sessions Judge in agreement with the assessors who accepted his plea of insanity. In

appeal he was found guilty of murder and transported for life with a recommendation made u/s 401, Criminal P. C. Rowland, J., in his judgment

followed ''Queen Empress v. Kadar Nasyer Shah'' N 23 Cal 604 describing it as a leading case which has been repeatedly followed. With the

greatest respect we are in complete agreement, so far as the question of the plea of insanity is concerned. The next decision placed before us in

''Kulandai Thevar v. Emperor'' 1950 Mad W N Cr. 95, a learned Bench of our own High Court in which an accused person who was described

as tired and hungry suddenly and without any cause or motive attacked a Muslim who accosted him, with an aruval and when pursued ran amock

and slaughtered four innocent children. The learned Judges referred to the three decisions to which we have adverted and following those

precedents reduced the sentence to transportation for life and made a recommendation to Government u/s 401, Criminal P. C.

With the greatest respect we are unable to follow this trend of judicial decision, but have not thought it fit to make any reference to a Full Bench

as it relates only to the Question of sentence which is one which must rest on the facts of each case. We have examined the decision ''Queen

Empress v. Lakshman Dagdu'', 10 Bom 512 of the year 1886 and find that it was based on the decision in Greensmith''s case reported in the 6th

Edn., of Taylor on the basis of which on the alleged ground of insanity a reprieve was granted on a representation led by a doctor of that day. We

have looked into the 6th Edn. of Taylor''s Medical Jurisprudence which came out in the year 1910 and can find no reference there to the case of

''Reg. v. Greensmith'', Med. Chir. Rev. Vol. 28, p 84, at all. The 6th Edn., of Taylor referred to in the Bombay decision appears to be the 6th

Edn., of a Manual of Medical Jurisprudence by Dr. Taylor which ran into at any rate 12 editions. We have been able to obtain a copy of the 12th

Edn., of this Manual published in 1891. Even in this edition there is no reference to Greensmith''s case and the opinion of Dr. Taylor on which the

Bombay decision was founded, it is obvious that the Bombay case of 1886 referred to the 6th Edn., of Taylor''s Manual of Medical Jurisprudence,

and that even by 1891 It was thought fit to exclude Greensmith''s case and the opinions expressed in the 6th Edn., altogether. Dr. Taylor himself

had died in 1880 after being for 40 years Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in Guy''s Hospital Medical School. In the 9th Edn., of Taylor''s

Medical Jurisprudence published In 1934 with a complete revision of the legal aspect by Mr. W. G. H. Cook, L.L.D., London, we find some

scathing judicial references to the doctrines of irresistible impulse, impulsive insanity and temporary mental derangement on medical theories. There

is reference at page 817 to Mr. Justice Wightman''s reference in ''R v. Burton'', to the doctrine of uncontrollable impulse as a most dangerous

doctrine fatal to the interests of the society and the security of life. We think it only necessary to quote this paragraph from this Edition of Taylor''s

Medical Jurisprudence at pages 817-818:

This defence has been raised in several cases in recent years, and in R. v. Holt'' (1920) 15 Crl A R 10 the Court of Criminal Appeal declined to

extend the test laid down in M. Naughten''s case'', so as to include ''uncontrollable impulse.'' The Lord Chief Justice said: ''It is not enough for a

medical expert to come to the Court and to say generally that in his opinion the criminal is insane. There must be some evidence of insanity within

the meaning of the rule in M. Naughten''s case''. In ''R. v. Kopsch'', (1925) 19 Crl AR 50 the Court of Criminal Appeal laid) down that the

defence of uncontrollable impulse: is unknown to English law. The Court expressed the view that ''the defence of insanity in this case, as in so many

cases was ""the merest nonsense"" and that ""if the fantastic theory of uncontrollable impulse were to become part of our, criminal law, it would be

merely subversive."" ""If the law were to be relaxed in the way suggested by some medical men, it is the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice of England

that the result might be to transfer to a section of the medical profession the question whether a great number of ordinary criminals should be held

responsible by the law.

With great respect we are in complete agreement with this summary contained in Taylor''s Medical Jurisprudence itself as to what should be the

correct law in multiple murders of this kind and to the extreme difficulty in passing sentence for Courts to infer temporary derangement or

hallucination or some uncontrollable impulse from the fact that multiple murders are brutally and senselessly committed by a person without any

apparent motive conscious of what he was doing and to take this into consideration as an extenuating circumstance which would protect him from

the extreme penalty of the law. In the tenth and the most recent edition of Taylor''s Principles of Jurisprudence, Vol. I, in considering the question

of insanity, there is at page 665 the following observation:

In some respects medical opinion has seemed for many years to Have ranged itself on the side of the criminal; but this is due not so much to a

desire to preserve the criminal from punishment as from a fundamentally different view in regard to the results obtained from punishment as

contrasted with the results which might be obtained from a different form of treatment.

Much has been written in this about the difference of opinion as between the medical and legal approach to the criminal.

We have embarked on this analysis of the history of the trend of Indian decisions in the matter of sentence, widely divergent as, it is in English

law, as we find it based on a medical opinion which appears to have been expressed by Dr. Taylor some years prior to 1886 which has received

the strongest discouragement and criticism from the English Courts so much so that the decision on which he relied, the Greensmith case in which

the Court passed the death sentence, has not been cited in any of his subsequent editions. In cases of multiple murders of this kind where an

accused is clearly not insane in the sense that he did not know what he was doing, but in the present case where he clearly knew what he was,

about, the mere absence of motive, the apparent senselessness of the murders and the fact that he murdered persons in his own family in cold

blood can, In our opinion, furnish no extenuating circumstances which we can take into consideration in mitigation of the sentence. We cannot take

upon ourselves the responsibility of recommending for a comparatively short period of Imprisonment a man who has once been a victim to

homicidal frenzy of this description and expose other innocent persons to a similar attack after his release from prison. In cases of this kind, as it

appears to us the law must take its course, and the only sentence that a criminal Court can pass Is the extreme penalty. The learned Sessions Judge

has done we consider his painful duty in this case. We are unable to reduce the sentence to transportation for life, far less to make any

recommendation to Government u/s 401, Criminal P.C. We have no option in the view we have taken but to dismiss the appeal and to confirm the

sentence of death passed on the appellant.