MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court recently acquitted two persons in a double murder case in Tiruchy in 2015, by protecting their right to self-defence.
According to the prosecution, the deceased-Arumugam and his brother Tirupathi- were on bad terms with the accused, Durairaj, Madhubalan and Kanagaraj, over a land dispute. It was alleged that the deceased had murdered two relatives of the accused.
On the date of occurrence, May 27, 2015, the three accused entered the property of the deceased and attacked them to death, the prosecution alleged. The trio was arrested and later convicted by a sessions court in Tiruchy in 2019, challenging which they filed a joint appeal. Since Durairaj passed away last year, his appeal was abated.
A bench comprising justices J Nisha Banu and N Anand Venkatesh, who recently heard the appeal with respect to the remaining two accused, pointed out that the police failed to investigate a vital point as to how the accused suffered severe injuries during the incident.
The judges noted that the three accused exercised their ‘right of private defence’ (Section 96 to 106 of Indian Penal Code) as the two deceased attacked them and caused head injuries. The Additional Public Prosecutor argued that even if it had been done in self-defence, the accused had exceeded their rights. But the judges rejected it saying a person facing a murderous attack cannot modulate his defence step-by-step.
“It is now a settled law that if a man has a real justification to exercise his right of private defence, he cannot be held liable if he slightly exceeds his right of private defence, particularly when he is face-to-face with a murderous attack, for these things cannot be weighed in golden scales,” they observed and acquitted the duo from the case.