LexCHINNA GOWDA versus STATE OF MYSORE
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I 2 s.c.R. StJPREME COURT REPOR1:8 CHINNA GOWDA v. STA1'E OF MYSORE (K. C. DAB GUl'Ta, J. R. MUDHOLKAR and T. L. VENKATAR.ill.A AIYAR, JJ.) 517 Criminal Trial-Approver-Corroboration of-·· Retracted confe•Bion• oJ co..accu•ed-When can be 'l<Bed a. corroboration. The appellants were convicted of murder. The sub- - stantial evidence on which the conviction rested was the evidence of an approver and the confessions of two co- accused. Held, that the conviction of the appellants could not be sustained. Though .there· is no bar for a conviction being based upon the evidence of an approver alone, as a matter of prudence the courts always require that· such evidence should be corroborated in material' particulars. The need for corroboration is all the greater in a case like- the present where the approver, apart from being of bad character, could not be said to be a man of truth since he had rcsiled from his confession before the Committing Court. The retracted confessions of the cc>·accused in the present case could not be safely relied upon for corroborating the approver. The confession of an accomplice which cannot be tested by cross-examination is a very weak type of evidence. Even if some weight could be attached to confessions when made by two or more accomplices independently of each other implicat- ing a particular accused the confessions in the present case were not such as could be taken as good corroboration of the approver. Bhuhoni Sahu v. Tht King [1949] L.R. 76 I, A. 147 and K~l:mira Singh v. State of Madhya PradeBh [1952] S.C.ll. 526, relied on. CimnNAL APPEi.LATE JumsDIOTION : Criminal Appeal Noe. 172 & 173of1961. Appeals by special leave from the judgment -~. and or~er d~t~d July 7, 1961 of the Mysore High Court m Criminal Appeals Noe. 352 and 355 of 1959 and Criminal Referred Case No. 25 of 1959, Aprilt7. IHI ChiMO Goa:irh •• sw .. JM,. ... 518 SUPREME COURT REPORTS (1963] N. H. llingorani, for the appellants. B. R. /,, Iyengar and H. H. Dhebar, for the respondents. 1962. April 27. The Judgment of the Court was delivered by MuDHOLKAR, J.-1'hc> appellant, China Gowda, was tried along with six othe1· persons for committing the murder of an entire family conais- ting of eight persons on the night intervening the . 12th and J:Jth February, 1958, in Handigodu hamlet of the village Viavalli. The learned Sessions Judge convicted every one of them under e. 302, Indian Penal Code, and sentenced each of them to death. In appeal, the accused No. 2, Shivappa Naika and accused No. 7, Gunde Gowda were acquitted. The appeals of the remaining accused persons were dis- missed The High Court, however, confirmed the con- viction and sent;inces only of the appellant Chinna Gowda and of Rame Gowda, appellant in (...'riminal Appeals Nos. 172 and 173 of 1961 and while affirm- ing the conviction of the other three aooused commuted the death sentences passed against them to imprisonment for life. The appellants in the two appeals were granted special leave by thi1 Court under Art. 136 of the Constitution and that is how the appeals are now before us. The fu.cts as alleged by the prosecution are briefly these: The deceased, Mariappa Gowda took up resi- denc" in Handigodu about eight or ten yeal'll prior to the murder. He was an industrious and thrifty person and soon became very prosperous. This aroused the envy and jealousy of the appellant, .. Chinna Gowda. In the course of years, numeroua •·· disputes over the boundaries of fields, trespasses on fields, the flow of water and so on arose between the two of them. For some time prior to the l I 2 S.C.R. SUPREME COURT REPORTS 519 murders, the relationship between Mariappa Gowda (deceased) and the appellant as well as Rame Gowda, the appellant in the other appeal, became very strained. It may be mentioned that Rame Gowda was actually living with Mariappa Gowda for some time and Mariappa Gowda leased out some lands to him. Shortly thereafter, both of them fell out and Mariappa Gowda was anxious to evict Rame Gowda, from the leased lands. Mariappa Gowda was, therefore, reluctant to issue receipts for rent paid by Ra.me Gowda, to him. This annoyed the latter. Eventually, however, on the intervention of Chandiah Hegde, P. W. 67, Mariappa Gowda passed a receipt in favour of Rame Gowda. To his surprise, Rame Gowda, however, found that the receipt <'ontained false recitals to the
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