Chennai Court Convicts Man of Culpable Homicide for Killing Mother, Sentences Him to 10 Years

The first of all, a Chennai sessions court has found a 31-year-old man, R Moorthy guilty of culpable homicide of his mother in 2021 after losing his temper. He was sentenced to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment as the court said that the offense was not premeditated but was committed in the heat of the passage of time. The incident occurred on September 19, 2021, when an intoxicated Moorthy stabbed his mother, R Lakshmi for not serving him dinner. His sister, Selvi and father, Ramalingam were there at the time. Moorthy had a history of verbal abuse on his family and demand for money to buy alcohol. Only, Ramalingam’s friend could see Moorthy leaving the place with a knife having blood on it. During the trial four prosecution witnesses including Selvi turned hostile. But the court believed in the prosecution’s evidence as laid down by the ‘last seen’ doctrine, which was supported by the evidence of Ramalingam’s friend. The court found that Morthy did not plan to commit the crime because he did not carry a knife when he returned home. The court said this in citing section 300 of the IPC: the offence is excepted from first-degree murder and falls under culpable homicide as defined by law. The fact that there was only one stab wound received a lot of weight on this. So, Moorthy was charged with culpable homicide amounting to an offence punishable under section 304 (II) of the Indian Penal Code, instead of murder, which attracts a life jail term. This judgment shows the differences between the two legal concepts of culpable homicide and murder and their relevance in legal practice.