JUDGMENT

Santosh Hegde, J.-The appellants herein, who are 6 in number, and 6 others were accused of having caused the death of one Preetam Singh on 15.7.1980 at about 12.30 p.m. in village Bhadera which incident according to the prosecution, was witnessed by Babu Lal PW-1 and his father Man Singh PW-2 along with Karan Singh PW-6. PW-2 was the elder brother of deceased Preetam Singh, PW-1 was his nephew while PW-6 Karan Singh was the uncle of the deceased. Prosecution alleged that all the accused persons including the appellants herein had enmity with the deceased on different grounds, hence on the date of the incident they formed themselves into an unlawful assembly being armed with deadly weapons like gun, farsa, lathi, barchhi, axe etc. and attacked the deceased while he was grazing his cattle in a field at village Bhadera, causing him multiple injuries consequent to which he died. It is the further case of the prosecution that PW-1 who witnessed the incident then went to the Police Station which was situated about 3 kms. away from the place of incident, and lodged a complaint which was registered as FIR Ex. P-1. Based on the said complaint, the Police initiated investigation and