EMPEROR Vs. BHAGI VEDU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this case the Sessions Judge of Nasik agreeing with the assessors has convicted the accused Bhagi, one of the wives of Vedu Lonari, of the offence of murder of one Shankar who was the child of her co-wife.

(2.) Mr. Gupte has argued the case for the accused and has brought forward every circumstance which can be possibly urged in favour of the accused. But notwithstanding all that he has urged I am of opinion that it is clearly established that the accused did quarrel with her co-wife, that the child Shankar was last seen alive in her company being taken by her towards the well in which his body was found on the following morning. I am also satisfied that the confession which the accused made on the 16 May to the Second Class Magistrate was a voluntary confession in which she has truly stated the motive with which she committed the crime. She states there with some detail that she quarrelled with her co-wife Baija that Baija had taunted her and that she was in an inflamed state of mind and anger the whole of that night and that on Sunday evening when she saw the boy she made up her mind to take the child and kill him. She then took him to the well in the garden of Raghoo Patil and dropped him in the well from which his dead body was taken the next morning.

(3.) In dealing with the evidence the Sessions Judge has referred to this confession as a genuine one.