In what is considered as one of the most challenging cases, the Madras High Court Bench here on Friday confirmed the conviction as well as life sentence imposed on a drunkard for strangulating his 90-year-old granny to death despite almost all witnesses in the case turning hostile, discrepancies in the evidence adduced in court and additional injuries found on the body of the nonagenarian.
Holding that courts must act with great caution in such cases and accept the evidence with greater degree of care to ensure that justice alone was done, a Division Bench of Justice A. Selvam and Justice T. Mathivanan ruled that the trial court in Tiruchi had rightly convicted Sudhakar alias Sudharsan for murdering his paternal grandmother on January 17, 2013 since she refused to part with her money and house.
According to the Srirangam police, the convict had fled from the scene when he was confronted, at the time of strangulating the elderly woman around 6.30 pm, by three of her neighbours and son-in-law who rushed her to a private hospital in an auto-rickshaw and asked his wife (the daughter of the deceased), out on some private work, over the phone to come to the hospital directly.
After they reached the hospital around 7.30 p.m, the convict’s paternal aunt lied to the doctor that the aged woman was struggling to breathe since she suffered a fall.
Believing her words, the doctor began treatment without informing the police.
However, the aged woman did not respond to the treatment and breathed her last at 7.55 p.m. forcing her son-in-law to lodge a police complaint at 11.30 p.m.
During trial, all three neighbours, who were eye-witness to the crime, turned hostile. While the investigation officer deposed that a written complaint was made to him, the complainant stated he made an oral complaint which was reduced to writing by a Sub-Inspector of Police. Further, the post-mortem report revealed that the left collar bone as well as the ribs of the deceased had fractured.
Though the convict insisted on acquittal on the basis of discrepancies, the judges rejected his plea by stating that the complainant had narrated the overt act of the convict comprehensively in his evidence which had stood the test of cross examination. “We are of the considered view that the evidence given by the complainant… is unequivocally pointing towards the guilt of the accused,” they observed.
Writing the judgement for the Bench, Mr. Justice Mathivanan said that the bones of the deceased might have got fractured when she was given heart massage at the private hospital.
“The deceased Mariyayee was aged about 90 years… Since, she was getting older, her bones would have been in a feeble nature, without having that much of strength,” he added.
