Govinda Menon, J.-The appellant has been convicted for having murdered his wife Pappayammal and his father Chinnappa Goundan and caused injuries to his son Perumal with the intention of causing his death. For the double murder he has been sentenced to death by the learned Sessions Judge. There can be no doubt whatever on the evidence before the lower Court, that it was due to the injuries inflicted by the appellant that both Pappayammal and Chinnappa Goundan died. [After discussing the facts his Lordship proceeded.] We are therefore of opinion that the learned Sessions Judge was perfectly right in convicting the appellant of the offence under section 302, Indian Penal Code, for the murder of his wife and father and under section 307 for attempting to cause the death of his child Perumal. The only point that requires consideration is whether the extreme penalty of the law should be inflicted in the circumstances of the case. The learned Sessions Judge himself was of opinion that the acts of the appellant were hardly those of a normal and sane person. There was no motive disclosed in the evidence as to why those ghastly and brutal murders should have taken place. The evidence of the appellant’s mother P.W.5 was to the effect that the appellant and his wife were not quarrelling and they were leading normal lives. Nothing has been. elicited as to why the appellant should have murdered his own father or attempted to kill his child Perumal. There is evidence elicited in the cross-examination of P.W.5 that the appellant used to sit often with a dazed and vacant look during the period he was not working. At that time he would not talk to any one. Those things indicate that the appellant did not have the normal mentality of an ordinary and sane person and though it cannot be predicated from the evidence that he was unsound or that he did not know the nature of the act as well as the circumstance that he did not know that he was committing a crime, it may be said that some kind of hallucination or frenzy might have been working in his mind and such being the case it seems to us that the ends of justice would be met if the sentence of death is reduced to one of transportation for life. We feel that the murder must have been committed in some frenzied mood or something in the nature of an abnormal state of mind. Subject to the above modification the appeal is dismissed. K.C. ----- Sentence reduced.