Madhya Pradesh High Court: This appeal was filed before a 2-Judge Bench comprising of Sujoy Paul and Nandita Dubey, JJ., against the order passed by trial court convicting appellant for the commission of offences under Sections 302 and 201 of Penal Code and sentencing her to life imprisonment.
Facts of the case were such that the deceased was the husband of appellant whose dead body was found inside a trunk in their house. After which trial took place where appellant was convicted and sentenced for the murder of her husband. Trial Court mainly relied on the testimony of deceased daughter and medical evidence on record which showed throttling as the reason for deceased death. The contention raised by Chetan Jaggi, Advocate appearing as amicus curiae for appellant was that there were no eye-witness and the sentence was passed on the basis of circumstantial evidence where the incident was not pre-planned.
High Court after going through the testimony of daughter of deceased, postmortem report viewed that deceased died due to throttling. Court found no explanation by the appellant as to how the dead body got into the trunk in a room only in access of appellant and deceased and once the prosecution has been able to show that at the relevant time, the room was in exclusive possession of the deceased and appellant, the burden of proof lies on the appellant under what circumstances the death of her husband occurred. Appellant failed to discharge this onus to prove. Therefore, the appeal was dismissed and it was found that the trial court had rightly convicted the appellant under Sections 302 and 201 of Penal Code. [Sudama Bai v. State of M.P., 2018 SCC OnLine MP 904, decided on 10-12-2018]
