Mulavani Kannan and Another vs State of Kerala

K.T. Thomas and; D.P. Mohapatra, JJ.-There are four appellants who alone were convicted by the trial court out of thirteen persons arrayed before it. But the trial court restricted the conviction to Section 326 read with Section 149 of the Indian Penal Code and sentenced each of them to rigorous imprisonment for five years. They as well as the State have filed appeals and the High Court allowed the State appeal by escalating the offence to Section 302 IPC as against A-2 Kannan and A-5 Krishnan @ Chukkru and sentenced them to imprisonment for life. The conviction and sentence passed on A-1 Sreedharan and A-4 Krishnan were maintained without interference.

The incident which gave rise to the said case happened at about 11.30 a.m. on 10-2-1982 in and out of the office of the Service Cooperative Society (Bank) of Poothanganam in Kasaragod district. It was the aftermath of political rivalry between the followers of Marxist party and BJP. Tension was prevailing in the locality as between the said two factions for a long time. At the time of occurrence a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Cooperative Society was being held. The assailants went there as a gang variously armed and barged into the office of the Society and started attacking their opponents. Some of the injured escaped by running away. But A-2 Kannan chased one person called Thankappan and intercepted him and inflicted a number of blows on him with a chopper. Likewise one Govindan who ran away was chased by A-5 Krishnan @ Chukkru who succeeded in catching the victim as he fell down on the way. A-5 then inflicted a lot of cut injuries on his body. Subsequently, Thankappan and Govindan died due to the injuries sustained.

Though a catena of witnesses was examined by the prosecution, it was found that only PW 1 Edmunda Krishnan and PW 2 Kavi Narayanan alone did matter as for the guilt of A-2 Kannan and A-5 Krishnan. This is because the rest of the witnesses were not able to pinpoint any of the assailants for inflicting the fatal injuries sustained by the deceased.

The trial Judge felt that PW 1 Krishnan would have run away from the place after receiving some assaults and therefore he would not have seen how the two deceased sustained injuries. Likewise the Sessions Judge felt about PW 2 Narayanan also.