CHENNAI: A man, who was found guilty of murdering his mother and slapped with imprisonment for life, has been set at liberty by the Madras high court, which found glaring errors in the autopsy finding as well as trial court's conclusions on the basis of statement recorded by police. (Except when statements given to police lead to recovery of material objects involved in the offence, they are inadmissible as valid evidence before courts)."It is common knowledge that immediately after manual strangulation if death occurs and if ligature strangulation is made subsequently in the same transaction, the ligature mark would make an appearance as if it were ante-mortem, because the cells on the neck would not have died immediately after the arrest of the functioning of the heart. Thus, we find that the opinion of the doctor that the death was due to manual strangulation as well as due to ligature strangulation is difficult to accept. The death due to hanging by means of ligature cannot be ruled out at all," said a division bench of Justice S Nagamuthu and Justice N Authinathan.The bench was passing orders on the appeal filed by Manikandan alias Rajesh, who was charged with murdering his mother Vijaya, aged 40 years, at Thirukkanur in Puducherry on February 1, 2015.According to police, Vijaya was quarrelling with her neighbours when Rajesh returned home. He tried to restrain her. When she did not listen to him, he pushed her into the house, slapped her, kicked her, strangulated her with hands and also strangulated her with a sacred thread worn by her. He later complained to the Thirukkanur police that she had committed suicide by hanging, using her sari as a ligature.The additional district and sessions judge-III, Puducherry, held Rajesh guilty on September 22 and awarded him imprisonment for life.Overturning the verdict, the division bench of the high court slammed the district court and said it had relied on the signed statement given by a doctor to police as if it were admissible in evidence."It is needless to point out that any statement given by a witness before the investigating officer, whether signed or unsigned, is inadmissible in evidence in view of the bar contained in Section 161(2) of CrPC. But, unfortunately, the trial court has admitted the statement of the doctor as substantive evidence and it has made reliance also," said the bench.Referring to the autopsy report, which said the death was due to ligature strangulation and manual strangulation, the judge said, "Both would not have caused the death. Had she died due to manual strangulation, then the ligature strangulation would have happened after death. Similarly, had she died due to ligature strangulation, manual strangulation made subsequently should be only an after-death strangulation. At any rate, it is not possible that the deceased would have died both due to manual strangulation and the ligature strangulation."The bench said it was a case built on circumstantial evidence, and said, "in this case, there is no such circumstance which would prove that the accused strangulated the deceased both manually and also with ligature and caused her death."

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