A four-hour digestion theory fails: Supreme Court upholds life terms for 2001 double axe murder

Justice K.V. Viswanathan and Justice Arun Palli say the trial court discarded the evidence of two widows on grounds that do not hold, and dismiss appeals against the High Court reversal of the acquittal.

The Supreme Court on 3 November 2026 upheld the murder convictions of the appellants in a 2001 double killing from a village in Karnataka. The trial court had acquitted them, and the High Court had reversed that acquittal in an appeal by the State.

A bench of Justice K.V. Viswanathan and Justice Arun Palli said the trial court rejected the evidence of the two widows who saw the attack on weak grounds. The judgment, written by Justice Viswanathan, is marked reportable.

The appeals were dismissed, and the appellants were ordered to surrender forthwith.

A gored goat and a Rs 600 claim

The prosecution traced the killings to a dispute over a goat. A bull belonging to Rudrappa (A-2) had gored a goat belonging to Nagappa (PW-25). Nagappa asked for Rs 600 towards treatment.

Rudrappa first handed over a goat to be kept until the money was paid. He later took it back and, according to the prosecution, beat Nagappa’s younger brother. At a meeting at the deceased’s house he said he would neither pay nor return the goat.

The accused, except A-4, then went to Nagappa’s house. Rudrappa swung an axe at Nagappa’s neck, and the blow fell on his right palm. Nagappa lodged a police complaint. The prosecution said the accused blamed the two deceased, Mallappa and Gulappa, for pushing him to do so.

The 1 am attack, as widows told it

The killings took place in the night of 8 and 9 September 2001. Doddasiddavva (PW-17), wife of Mallappa, was sleeping on a raised platform outside their house with her husband and their 11-month-old child. Siddavva (PW-18), wife of Gulappa, was in a cattle shed 60 to 70 feet away with her husband.

PW-17 said she woke at about 1 am when her child cried. She saw Shekappa (A-1), Rudrappa (A-2), Hanumappa (A-3) and Gangappa (A-4) holding axes. Yellappa (A-5) and Suresh (A-6) held her legs, and Kenchappa (A-7) held her hands.

She said Rudrappa struck Mallappa on the mouth, Gangappa on the hand he raised, and Shekappa on the neck. The group announced that Mallappa was finished and went to the cattle shed to kill Gulappa.

There, PW-17 said, Hanumappa and Kenchappa held PW-18, while Yellappa and Suresh kept watch in the alley. Shekappa, Rudrappa and Gangappa attacked Gulappa with axes. PW-18 was hit on the forehead with the blunt handle of an axe, and the accused fled.

PW-17 went to the police station after daybreak and lodged a written complaint, Crime No. 74 of 2001. The post-mortem by Dr. Junjeshwar (PW-19) found antemortem injuries and put the cause of death at shock and haemorrhage from neck wounds. Both courts accepted that the deaths were homicidal.

From acquittal to conviction

The trial court acquitted the accused. It reasoned that PWs 22 and 25 were not eyewitnesses and that the recovery of weapons was improper. It doubted that Nagappa was present, since the accused would not have spared a man who had complained against them.

It also relied on the delay in the complaint, the absence of independent witnesses, a four-hour gap in the time of death, discrepancies in the widows’ evidence, and the lack of proof of the source of light. It noted that the inquest form did not name any eyewitness.

The High Court found that reasoning perverse and not based on the record. It convicted the appellants under Sections 143, 148, 302, 323 and 341 read with Section 149 of the Indian Penal Code and sentenced them to life imprisonment for murder, with varying terms for the lesser offences.

Before the Supreme Court, Senior Counsel Mr. Basava Prabhu S. Patil appeared for the appellants, and Additional Advocate General Mr. Avishkar Singhvi for the State. The bench called for the trial court records and read them.

When an acquittal can be reversed

The bench began with the settled test. Citing Arulvelu v. State, (2009) 10 SCC 206, it said an appellate court has full power to re-appreciate the evidence behind an acquittal.

The caveat is that where two reasonable conclusions are possible, the acquittal should stand. To reverse it, the appellate court must find that the acquittal was clearly perverse or wholly unsustainable in law.

The bench said the trial court had discarded crucial evidence implicating the appellants and glorified non-essential aspects that did nothing to dilute the direct accounts of the two widows. It agreed with the High Court that the acquittal was unsustainable.

“No two views are possible in this case” (para 21)

Motive and the two eyewitnesses

The trial court had brushed aside motive. The bench said that was not justified, though motive matters little when direct evidence is trustworthy.

“motive pales into insignificance where there is direct evidence which is trustworthy” (para 22)

Here, it said, the motive was also established. The goat dispute created enmity between Nagappa and the accused, and the deceased had sided with him. The meeting at the deceased’s house and the later attempt on Nagappa fitted that account.

The bench found PW-17 and PW-18 natural witnesses. They were the wives of the deceased and would naturally be beside them in the middle of the night. They knew the accused and described what each did. Cross-examination, it said, did nothing to shake them.

“The Trial Court over emphasized on minor contradictions which have no significance whatsoever.” (para 31)

The bench also rejected the argument that the widows were interested witnesses. Being related does not make a witness interested or partisan, it said, and it found their evidence natural and trustworthy. PW-18 was herself an injured witness, and the doctor confirmed that her swelling was consistent with a blow from an axe handle.

Light, voices and the electricity certificate

The trial court had doubted that the witnesses could see the accused. The bench pointed to the evidence that an electric light was burning in front of the house, and to a certificate, Exh. P.9, from the Assistant Executive Engineer (PW-10) that power was supplied in the village at about 1.30 am that night.

PW-10 had verified the records for 1.30 to 1.35 am. Asked about earlier hours, he said supply continued from 10 pm to 6 am, and added that he had enquired by telephone with another engineer rather than checking the records himself. The bench said the trial court used convoluted reasoning to discard the certificate.

In any case, it said, witnesses who know the accused can identify them by voice and appearance, and the accused stood close by. The role of each was clearly described by the widows.

An inquest that names no eyewitness

The trial court made much of the fact that the inquest panchnama did not name the eyewitnesses. The bench held that the High Court rightly rejected the point.

Section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, now Section 194 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, is meant to record the apparent cause of death and the injuries. Details of who struck, in what circumstances, and who witnessed it, fall outside its scope.

The bench relied on Radha Mohan Singh v. State of U.P., (2006) 2 SCC 450. That judgment collected earlier decisions and held there is no requirement to mention the FIR, the names of the accused or eyewitnesses, or the gist of their statements, in an inquest report.

It overruled paragraphs 11 and 12 of Meharaj Singh v. State of U.P. as not a correct statement of law.

An eyewitness account, the bench concluded, cannot be discarded because the witness is not named in the inquest report. The same went for the trial court’s points that the family did not tell other villagers and that no independent witness was examined. At that hour, the bench said, the widows were the most natural witnesses.

The four-hour gap and the digestion theory

The trial court leaned on an answer by the doctor to a question from the court. If the two men had eaten together, Gulappa had died four hours after Mallappa, judging by stomach contents.

The record shows the doctor said earlier that Gulappa died more than four hours after his last meal and Mallappa within four hours of his. In cross-examination he put Mallappa’s last meal at two or three hours before death, and Gulappa’s at six to eight.

He added that the time since the last meal cannot be given from small intestine contents alone, and that both deaths were instantaneous.

The High Court called the court’s question complex, and held that the answer was no basis to reject reliable eyewitnesses. It also asked how the accused could have waited four hours between two killings near the same house. The bench agreed.

The widows placed the attacks around 1 am, one after the other, after dinner at about 10 pm. The bench said the trial court had rested on a single answer and an inference about digestion.

It cited Nihal Singh v. State of Punjab, [1964] 4 SCR 5. The time food takes to digest varies with the food, the person and his health at the time. Where reliable eyewitnesses speak clearly to the time, probabilities of digestion cannot be the sole basis to reject oral evidence.

Shivaji Sahabrao Bobade v. State of Maharashtra, (1973) 2 SCC 793, made a similar point. Digestive evidence is inconclusive and cannot contradict positive evidence on the time of death. The bench called the defence argument on digestion very difficult to digest on the facts.

Delay and the drafting of the complaint

The defence also relied on delay in lodging the FIR and a supposed contradiction between PW-17 and Somashekhar (PW-20), who wrote the complaint. The bench found no contradiction worth mentioning.

PW-17 said she set out for the police station at about 8 am. The police insisted on a written complaint, and while she waited she saw PW-20 passing and asked him to write it. He confirmed this. The bench agreed with the High Court that this was corroboration, not contradiction.

The complaint was registered at 10 am, and the FIR reached the magistrate at 2.30 pm. The High Court noted that the police station was six kilometres away, there was no bus, the incident was at night and two members of the family were dead. The bench endorsed those findings.

It added that variations in the widows’ accounts, and the finding that PWs 22 and 25 were not eyewitnesses, did not touch the core of the prosecution case. The injuries described by Dr. Junjeshwar corroborated the widows on all material aspects.

Order

The Supreme Court found no good ground to interfere with the High Court judgment and dismissed the appeal. The appellants were directed to surrender forthwith.

If they do not, the trial court is to take steps to take them into custody.