694 Krishna Rao Gurumurthi & Anor v. PP & Another Appeal [2007] 1 MLRA KRISHNA RAO GURUMURTHI & ANOR v. PP & ANOTHER APPEAL Court Of Appeal , Putrajaya Gopal Sri Ram, Zulkefli Makinudin, Raus Sharif JJCA [Criminal Appeal No: A-05-52-1999] 22 March 2007 JUDGMENT Gopal Sri Ram JCA: [1] There are two appeals before us. One of them is Criminal Appeal No. A-05-52-99. We will refer to the appellant in that appeal as the first accused. The other is Criminal Appeal No. A-05-56-99 in which we will refer to the appellant as the second accused. Both appeals were taken together. In the court below the first and second accused together with one Kumaresan (now at liberty) were jointly tried on four charges of murder. Surprisingly, Kumaresan (the third acussed) was acquitted at the close of the prosecution's case despite the rather compelling evidence that was led against him. Unfortunately the order acquitting him was not appealed against. The first and second accused were, however, called upon to enter their defence and were convicted on all four charges. Each appealed against his conviction and sentence. At the close of argument on these appeals, we dismissed them. In giving reasons for our decision we are spared from regurgitating the facts in detail or narrating the evidence at length as the learned judge (whose judgment has been reported in [2000] 1 CLJ 446 ) has handled them admirably. [2] The case presented by the prosecution at the trial is as follows. Kedai Emas Chitra is a jewellery shop in Ipoh. It is owned by PW26 (Nalliah Periasamy). He and his wife (Virama) ran the business. They had a maid, Juriah who also helped out. They had a 15 year old son, Sathian. There was a watchman at the shop. He was Balakrishnan. At about 1am on 13 March 1998, PW33 (Harminderjit Singh) was near the jewellery shop. His attention was attracted by the sound of the burglar alarm from the jewellery shop. He saw a car parked outside the shop. It was a Proton Iswara No PCV 7749. He saw a person sitting in the driver's seat. A short while later he saw two other persons come out from the shop. They got into the car and drove away. PW33 followed them until he lost them along Jalan Gopeng. He then went off to have his supper before going to the police station where he reported what he had seen. A police team then proceeded to the shop. They found the watchman missing. The shop had been burgled. Much of the jewellery had been taken. A short while later, acting on information provided by a neighbour, the police proceeded to PW26's home. There they found the bodies of Virama, Sathian and Juriah. All three had been violently killed. Sathian and Juriah were found to