Tbakar Singh, deceased was a wealthy landlord whose sister was the Maharani of Patiala. He had executed a will in fa vow: of his. wife and two sons A vtar Singh, and Datar Singh on 24-8-196 7. He cancelled this will and executed another in favour of his sister Rani Prem Kaur on 18-4-1968 and got it registered at Dhuri ·probably B because Joginder Singh, P.W.I., a friend of. his, was the Sub Registrar there. Tbe deceased Tbakar Singh had also alienated some property in favour of Jasvinder Singh, minor, aged about 10 or 11 years, a son of Joginder Singh, ·P. W.I, apout a year and a half before the murder. Avtar Singh, the elder son of Thakar Singh, had filed a suit to pre-empt this sale. The suit was pending at the time of the occurrence. The relations of Thakar Singh deceased with his wife and c children were straine4. This background was said to provide the motive for murder. If Balbir Singh, P .W.2, could be believed, tlie wife of Thakar Singh had described her husbai;d as a sweeper's son. Apparently, there was not much love lost between Thakar Singh on one side and his wife and children on the other. The alleged motive for this murder was certainly too old to convincingly appe.ra as the cause of the murder of 22-2-1970 in so melodramatic a styfe as the alleged D eye witnesses would have us believe. Moreover, if a former will had been cancelled and another will executed in favour of a sister of Thakar Singh, it could very well be urged that other persons interested in seeing that Thakar Singh died before he could cancel his last will of 18-4-1968 had a stronger motive to murder him than others who might E still be able to persuade him to change his mind. And, if Thakar Singh's strained relations with his wife and children could be a sufficient motive for the murder it is difficult to underst.and why Datar Singh rather than.his elder brother Avtar Singh could have a stronger animus to kill the father. In any case, there is no evidence to show that Datar Singh, appellant, had any special motive or reason of his own for patricide such as a violent quarrel or dispute with his father precedini: the murder which could have unhinged bis mind. If, as was suggested F repeatedly on behalf of the prosecution, the members of the family of Thakar Singh were really influential, it was much easier for them to hire some individual to murder Thakar Singh, assuming that teir hostility to Thakar Singh went so far as to impel them to think' of getting rid of him like that, rather than for one of them to murder Thakar Singh himself right in front of his two alleged close _friends in the blazing light of electricity after rushing into the room in which they G were-sitting and revealing his identity to witfieS<cs as Datar Singh h alleged to have done. On the whole, the evidence of alleged motive and of Thakar Singh's unhappy relations with his wife ani cl1ildrcn. all said to be living together in the Naru Houoe with Thakur Singh, hinders rather th. n helps us in accepting the prosecution version that it was Datar Singh who had committed the murder of his father in the reckless maner set up and not somebody else in a diffcren• and less H foolish way. Of course, if Joginder Singh, P.W.1 and Balbir Singh P.W.2, could be implicitly relied upon, the mere absence of a strong enough motive for committing such an unnatural crime ·as patricide or the mode of its commission could be of no assistance to the appellant..
