JUDGMENT

V. R. KRISHNA IYER, J.:— Mr. Frank Anthony has argued elaborately, punctuated with strident emphasis, several points in support of the innocence of the petitioners who have been convicted under S. 302 read with S. 34 and S. 307 I.P.C. The High Court has affirmed the conviction entered by the trial court and sentences of life imprisonment have been awarded by both the courts for both the accused. Certainly, some persuasive factors, which may militate against the culpability of the accused and the prosecution version of the precise nature of the occurrence, were brought to our notice by counsel who also strongly urged that there were embellishments and improbabilities invalidating the conviction. We have had the advantage of perusing the extensively spread-out judgment of the High Court, in the light of the critical arguments addressed, but remain unconvinced that there is any serious error which warrants grant of leave.

2. Credibility of testimony, oral circumstantial, depends considerably on a judicial evaluation of the totality, not isolated scrutiny. While it is necessary that proof beyond reasonable doubt should be adduced in all criminal cases, it is not necessary that it should be perfect. If a case is proved too perfectly, it is urged that it is artificial; if a case has some flaws, inevitable because human beings are prone to err, it is argued that it is too imperfect. One wonders whether in the meticulous hypersensitivity to eliminate a rare innocent from being punished, many guilty men must be callously allowed to escape. Proof beyond reasonable doubt is a guideline, not a fetish and guilty man cannot get away with it because truth suffers some infirmity when projected through human processes. Judicial quest for perfect proof often accounts for police presentation of fool-proof concoction. Why fake up? Because the court asks for manufacture to make truth look true? No, we must be realistic.

3. We are satisfied that the broad features of the case, the general trend of the testimony and the convincing array of facts which are indisputable, converge to the only conclusion that may be reasonably drawn, namely, that the accused are guilty. Theoretical possibilities may not shake up, fancied weaknesses may not defeat, when verdicts are rested on sure foundations. Stray chances of innocence haunting the corridors of the court cannot topple concurrent findings of guilt.

4. We feel unhappy that, while infirmity in some aspect or other of this prosecution case should not invalidate the culpability which is otherwise veraciously made out, tragic occurrences like this one, should and could be avoided by preemptive State action, given imagination and intelligence. Had that been done the lethal episode might not have materialised and a young life not been lost. And, on the other side, two boys, if we may say so, are the convicts, one who is 16 years and the other barely 20 years and yet the attack was induced by a previous murder, rending a family into two feuding branches and leading to this vengeful murder. And the pity of it is this bleeding explosion was sparked off by a trivial friction caused by turns of irrigation. We refer to the observation of the High Court:

"As is well known and borne out by the reported cases the drawing of water by turns is an endless cause of dispute."

If this socio-economic source of irritation, induced by turns of irrigation, were so frequent, it behoved any aware Government not to watch and wait for murders to take place and then to prosecute after lives have been lost but to anticipate and smoothen the whole process so that avoidable frictions and tensions do not hot up. violence often erupts from stress and distress. If wars are made in the minds of men crimes are rooted in the consciousness of man. It is the vigilent duty of a responsible Government not to merely track down criminals after the crime but to forestall escalation of traumatic buildups by quia timet steps before the crime. The A