Autopsy Could Not Determine Cause Of Wife’s Death, But Karnataka HC Upholds Husband’s Life Sentence For Murder

The prosecution alleged that Alla Bakash murdered his wife, Shanuma, by slitting her throat in their rented house on 19 April 2018 and locked the house afterward.

On 23 April, he allegedly told the deceased’s sister that he had killed Shanuma; relatives found her decomposed body in the locked house the following morning.

The post-mortem doctor could not determine the cause of death because of decomposition, but estimated that death had occurred four days to one week before the examination.

The Sessions Court convicted the appellant under Sections 302 and 201 of the IPC and imposed life imprisonment for murder and seven years’ rigorous imprisonment for causing disappearance of evidence.

The appellant challenged the convictions, disputing proof of homicidal death, the extra-judicial confession, and the prosecution’s claim that he lived with the deceased.

Sections 302 and 201 of the IPC respectively address murder and causing the disappearance of evidence or giving false information to screen an offender from punishment.

In a case based on circumstantial evidence, the circumstances must be fully established, consistent only with guilt, conclusive in nature, and form a chain excluding reasonable hypotheses consistent with innocence; the court relied on Nikhil Chandra Mondal v. State of West Bengal, 2023 (6) SCC 605.

An extra-judicial confession is inherently weak evidence and must be assessed with care; it should be voluntary, truthful, confidence-inspiring, free of material discrepancies or inherent improbabilities, and ordinarily supported by reliable corroboration.

The court referred to Sahadevan v. State of Tamil Nadu as quoted in Nikhil Chandra Mondal and to Moorthy v. State of Tamil Nadu, AIR 2023 SC 3960.

The Court found that testimony from the deceased’s relatives, the landlord, and other witnesses established that the appellant and Shanuma lived together in the house where her body was found, rejecting the defence that she had lived there alone.

A neighbour testified that he saw the appellant quarrelling with and assaulting Shanuma while holding a knife on the night alleged, and the appellant’s employer testified that the appellant wore a bloodstained shirt the next day.

Although the doctor could not determine the cause of death, the estimated time since death was consistent with the other evidence; the Court also treated the appellant’s absence and the locked house as supporting circumstances.

The Court acknowledged the limits of the extra-judicial confession but found it was made to the deceased’s sister and was corroborated by independent evidence, including the subsequent discovery of the body.

It held that the discrepancy in the date on the seized-articles cover did not undermine the prosecution case, and that the failure to send the bloodstained articles for forensic examination did not negate the evidence concerning the appellant’s bloodstained shirt.

Taken cumulatively, the Court concluded that the circumstances formed a conclusive chain consistent with guilt.

It dismissed the appeal and left the convictions and sentences under Sections 302 and 201 of the IPC undisturbed.