Judgment

CHANDRACHUD, J. (for himself and on behalf of Shinghal J.):- Five small girls about ten years of age, a year old infant and four women in their mid-thirties were found murdered between November 14, 1972 and January 4, 1974 in a village called Manwat in Maharashtra. The murders of these ten females show significant similarities in pattern and conception. The time and place chosen for the crimes, the preference for females as victims, the nature of injuries caused to them, the strange possibility that the private parts of some of the victims were cut in order to extract blood, the total absence of motive for killing these very girls and women, the clever attempt to dodge the police and then to put them on a false scent and the extreme brutality surrounding the crimes give to the case an eerie appearance. Such harrowing happenings make the task of discovering truth difficult and it is just as well to begin with Justice Vivian Boses reminder that the shocking nature of the crime ought not to induce an instinctive reaction against a dispassionate scrutiny of facts and law.

2. We have three appeals before us, all by special leave granted by this Court. Cr. A. No. 437 of 1976 is fi