Judgment

FAZAL ALI, J. - In these appeals the appellants have been convicted under various sections of the Indian Penal Code as fully indicated in the judgment of the High Court. The main charges against the accused related to a conspiracy said to have been hatched at Calicut and Tellicherry in pursuance of which a number of illegal acts like raiding police station, committing dacoities had been committed.

2. The prosecution case in its essential details has been elaborately indicated in the judgment of the High Court and it is not necessary for us to repeat the same all over again. There were a very large number of accused, some of whom were convicted and there was another category of accused who were acquitted by the Sessions Judge and on appeal by the State convicted by the High Court. Apart from other prosecution witnesses, the prosecution relied on the testimony of accomplice witnesses P.Ws. 119, 126 and 165 as also P. Ws. 76 and 85 who were also more or less in the nature of accomplice witnesses.

3. Broadly speaking, the prosecution case was that the accused were members of the Communist Party Marxist which believed in the ideology of capturing power by force and by bringing about an armed revolution and in pursuance of this conspiracy the appellants attacked various police stations and committed dacoities in order to seize arms, weapons and explosives so that they may be able to achieve their object. According to the prosecution, there were several limbs of the main conspiracy one of which was held at Calicut on the night of 30th October, 1968 and the other at Tutorial College at Tellicherry in the house of accused No. 2 who was the proprietor of the College. At these two places it was decided to raid the police stations and commit various illegal acts. Thus, a close analysis of the case reveals the following incidents which form the basis of the charges against the accused:

1. Conspiracy in the house of accused No. 1 at Calicut on 30-10-1968;

2. Conspiracy in the Tutorial College at Tellicherry owned by accused No. 2 on 17-11-1968;

3. Attack on Tellicherry Police Station between 3 to 3-30 a.m. on 22-11-1968;

4. Attack on Pulpally wireless station at about 3-30 a.m. on 24-11-1968;

5. Dacoity in the house of P.W. 106 at Chekati;

6. Dacoity in the shop of P.W. 116 on 24-11-1968.

7. Dacoity in the house of P.W. 117 on 24-11-1968.

4. After having heard counsel for the parties and having gone through the entire record of the case we feel that the prosecution has not been able to lead satisfactory evidence to prove that a conspiracy was hatched either at Calicut or at Tellicherry as alleged. Furthermore, as regards the dacoities committed in various places there is no legal evidence to prove the identification of the accused as participants in any of those dacoities. There is, however, clear evidence to prove the participation of some of the accused with respect to the attack on Pulpally wireless station where some police officers were injured and one of them was killed. So far as the attack on Tellicherry Police Station is concerned, there is no reliable evidence to prove that the appellants concerned had participated in the occurrence which took place at Tellicherry. We may also note that although some of those incidents have undoubtedly been proved by the accomplice witnesses, namely, P.Ws. 119, 124 and 165 as also P.Ws. 76 and 85 yet we do not find any material on the record which may furnish a sufficient corroboration of their evidence. The law is well settled that the Court looks with some amount of suspicion on the evidence of an accomplice witness which is a tained evidence and even Section 133 of the Evidence Act clearly provides that the evidence of an accomplice witness should not be accepted unless corroborated. At the same time, it must be remembered that corroboration must be in respect to material particulars and not with respect to each and every item however minor or insignificant it may be. Actually the requirement of