Judgment

M.K. Mukherjee, J.-Seventeen persons, including the ten appellants before us, were tried by the Sessions Judge, Raichur for rioting, murder and other cognate offences and acquitted. Assailing their acquittal the respondent-State of Karnataka filed an appeal in the High Court during the pendency of which three of them died and, re­sultantly, the appeal as against them abated. Of the surviving four­teen, the High Court upheld the acquittal of three and, reversing the acquittal of the other eleven (who were arrayed as A1, A2, A4 to A10, A12 and A13 before the trial Court and will henceforth be so referred to), convicted them under Section 148 IPC and 302, 307, 449, 436 and 201 IPC, all read with Section 149 IPC. A9 died thereafter and the remaining ten filed the instant appeal under Section 379 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

2. (a) According to the prosecution case on October 10, 1985, at or about 10 A.M. the accused persons formed themselves into an unlawful assembly armed with various weapons in village Bappur and, in prosecu­tion of their common object, accosted Veerabhadrappa (PW 1) and Pampanagowda (the deceased), when they came out of the hotel of Pam­payya (PW 4) an