Judgment

FAZAL ALI, J.:- These appeals by special leave arise out of a judgment dated December 19, 1975 of the Allahabad High Court by which the High Court reversed the conviction and sentence of the respondents. for various offences under Ss. 147, 148, 225/149 and 302/149 of the Indian Penal Code and acquitted them of all the charges.

2. The prosecution case is fully detailed in the judgments of the Sessions Judge and the High Court and it is not necessary to cover the same grounds all over again. We would. mention only the broad outlines of the case presented by the prosecution before the trial court. The unfortunate dispute in the instant case which resulted in the death of the deceased appears to have been the last step of a drama long in process as a result of a long standing enmity between the parties for the last twenty five years.

3. It was contended on behalf of the appellant that the High Court erred in setting aside the conviction of the respondents on the ground that all the witnesses examined to prove the occurrence were interested persons and hence no reliance could be placed on their evidence. To begin with, we dare say that this was doubtless an absolutely wrong and perverse approach. There is no law which says that in the absence of any independent witness, the evidence of interested witnesses should be thrown out at the behest or should not be relied upon for convicting an accused. What the law, requires is that where the witnesses are interested, the court should approach their evidence with care and caution in order to exclude the possibility of false implication. We might also mention that the evidence of interested witnesses, is not like that of an approver which is presumed to be tainted and requires corroboration but the said evidence is as good as any other evidence. It may also be mentioned that in a faction ridden village, as in the instant case as mentioned by us earlier, it will really be impossible to find independent persons to come forward and give evidence and in a large number of such cases only partisan witnesses would be natural and probable witnesses. This Court in Badri v. State of U.P., (1975 Cri LJ 1739), made the following observations :

"In case where a murder takes place in a village where there are two factions bitterly opposed to each other, it would be idle to expect independent persons to come forward to give evidence and only partisan witnesses would be natural and probable witnesses to the incident. In such a case, it would not be right to reject their testimony out of hand merely on the ground that they belonged to one faction or another. Their evidence has to be assessed on its own merits."

4. The High Court has cited this decision and seems to be aware of the view taken by this Court but has, unfortunately, misapplied this decision while dealing with the evidence produced by the, prosecution.

5. The dominant question to be considered in the instant case is whether the witnesses, despite being interested, have spoken the truth and are creditworthy. Once it is found by the court, on an analysis of the evidence of an interested witness that there is no reason to disbelieve him then the mere fact that the witness is interested cannot persuade the court to reject the prosecution case on that ground alone.

6. The entire edifice of the prosecution, in the instant case, depends on the evidenc of PWs 1, 5, 8 and 14. We have perused their evidence and we are unable to find any serious infirmity or inherent improbability in their evidence.

7. On a perusal of the judgment of the High Court, it seems to us that it has dealt with other circumstances in a rather summary fashion but the central idea which weighed with the High Court while acquitting the accused was that as the eye-witnesses were interested and not independent, it was not safe to convict the accused. On the other hand, a perusal of the trial courts judgment clearly shows that each and every circumstance or criticism against the prose