JUDGMENT

Banerjee, J.-It is now a well-settled principle of law, that in an appeal against conviction for the offence of murder, Supreme Court would be rather slow to intervene, in the event of there being a concurrent finding of fact, unless of course, the finding reached suffers from some vice and thus violative of fundamental rules or even a definite procedural injustice going to the root of the prosecution case. (See in this context, the decision of this Court in Arjun Marik and others v. State of Bihar: 1994 Suppl. 2 SCC p. 372). It is on this perspective that the present appeal against the common judgment dated 28th July, 1999 passed by the High Court of Patna in Crl. A. No. 590 of 1984 and 686 of 1984 shall have to be considered. Before adverting to the contentions in support of the appeal, in the matter in issue, a note of caution shall have to be kept in mind, as has been administered by this Court from time to time, that scrutiny of evidence in a murder trial should be effected with more than ordinary care so as not to affect dispassionate judicial scrutiny .

2. The judgment under appeal stands criticised on three major counts: the first of the three counts relate to the p