EDIGA ANAMMA versus STATE OF ANDHRA PRADESH

Citation: [1974] 3 S.C.R. 329 · Decided: 11-02-1974 · Supreme Court of India · Bench: V.R. KRISHNA IYER · Disposal: Case Partly allowed

Cited by 2 judgment(s) · see the full citation network in Lexace

Judgment (excerpt)

A 
B 
EDIGA ANAMMA 
v. 
STATE OF ANDHRA PRADESH 
February 11, 1974. 
[V. R. KRISHNA IYER AND R. S. SARKARIA, JJ.] 
Cri111i1wl Law-Practice and Pror:edure--Of]ence of 11111rdeJ·--Circu111sta11c,•s 
justifying lesser sentence. 
The appellant, a rustic young .woman, flogged out of her husband's house 
by her father-in-law, was living with her 
parents with her only child. 
She 
committed a premeditated, cleverly planned murder of another young woman 
and her child became of rivalry between the appellant and the murdered woman 
for tb.e affections of an illicit lover. 
The Sessions court awarded the death 
iiCDtence and the High Court confirmed. 
C 
In appeal to this Court. 
D 
E 
F 
G 
HELD: The death sentence must be dissolved and life sentence substituted. 
(i) Modern penology regards crime and criminal as equally material when 
the right sentence has to be picked out although in our processual system there 
is neither comprehensive provision nor adequate machinery for collection and 
presentation of social and personal data of the culprit to the extent required 
in the verdict on sentence, However, in the Criminal Procedure Bill, 1973, 
Parliament has wisely written into the law a post conviction stage 
when the 
judges shall "hear the accused 011 the question of sentence and then pass set~tence 
on him according to law." 
r334 Cl 
The unn1istakable shift in legislative en1phasis is that life imprisonn1ent for 
murder is the rule and capital sentence the exception to be resorted 
to 
for 
reasons to be stated. 
The disturbed conscience of the state on 
the 
vexed 
question of legal threat to life by way of death sentence has sought to express 
itself legislatively, the stream 
of 
tendency being towards cautious partial 
abolition and the retreat from total retention. 
[336 HJ 
Code of Criminal Procedure Section 367(5) as amended by Act 26 
of 
1955; Criminal Procedure Bill, 1973, Sections 235, 238 and 354(3); lndian 
Penal Code (Amendment) Bill, 1972, SCction 122, referred to. 
(ii) The case on hand has to be disposed of under the present Code and 
the Court has to fall back upon the method of judicial hunch in imposing or 
avoiding capital sentence aided by such circumstances as are present on the 
record introduced for the purpose of proving guilt. [334 DI 
(iii) In the present case the criminal's social and personal 
factors, . her 
fen1inity and youth, her unbalanced sex and expulsion from the conjugal home 
and being the mother of a young boy-these individually 
inconclusive 
and 
cumulatively marginal facts and circumstances tend towards awarding of life 
imprisonment. 
[339 B-Cl 
Further, the Sessions Judge pronounced the death penalty on 
DeL"Cmber, 
31, 1971 and the appeal is being heard in February 1974. This prolonged agony 
has ameliorative impact according to the rulings of this Court. 
Piara Dusad/1 v. Efnoeror A.I.R. t 944 F.C.I.; N. Sreeramula v. State of 
Andhra Pradesl1, 1973 C.L.J. 1773; State of Bihar ''- Pasl1upati Si11glt, A.l.R. 
I 973 S.C. 2699. referred to. 
CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION : Criminal Appeal No. 67 
of 1973. 
H 
Appeal by Special Leave from the Judgment and Order dated 
the 24th March, 1972 of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in Criminal 
Appeal No. 12 of 1972 and Referred Trial No. I of 1972. 
::J 30 
SUPREME COURT REPORTS 
[ 1974] 3 S.C.R. 
R. P. Kathuria, an1icus curiae for the appellant. 
P. Ram Reddy and P. P. Rao for the respondent. 
The Judgment of the Court was delivered bv 
KRISHNA IYER, J. 
In a rural region of Andhra Pradesh Frendian 
fury cl'. explosion of sex jealousy expressed 
itself 
in 2 
gruesome 
murder of a young woman and her tender child by the accused, a 
young woman, with an only child ~en years old, all, because notwith-
standing both being married, they had invested amorous affections in 
a middle-aged libertine, P.W. 16, conveniently a widower. 
It is an 
admitted fact that the accused, although married, was keeping illicit 
relations with P.W. 16, a shepherd, but she discovered that lately her 
paramour was on flirting contacts with the deceased. 
This knowledge 
angered her so much that she extinguished the life of her rival on 
November 4 .. 1971 in the afternoon in a jungle, 
manipulating her 
murderous venture so cleverly that for a time people thought that she 
was the murdered and searched for her body. Closer enquiry revealed 
that the victim was Ansuya and the other innocent one her baby less 
than two years old. 
Shri Kathuria, appearing as a

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