JUDGMENT

R.F. NARIMAN, J.

1. Leave granted.

2. The present appeals raise the spectre of a ghastly rape and murder. The brief facts necessary for appreciation in these appeals are as follows.

3. One Mohanakrishnan (at 7.50 a.m. on 29.10.2010) who had borrowed a vehicle from PW.7 its owner, picked up two children, a girl aged 10 years old and her brother aged 7 years old from outside a Hindu Temple as the children were preparing to go to school. This Mohanakrishnan was seen by PW.3, the priest of the particular Vinayakar Temple and by PW.9, the grandmother of the two children, taking the children away in the aforesaid vehicle. Mohanakrishnan then drove the children to a petrol pump at around 8.15 a.m. on the same day, and at 9.30 a.m. picked up the Appellant from his house in Angalakuruchi. The children were then taken to a remote area called the Gopalsamy Temple Hills at roughly 10.45 a.m. at which point rape was allegedly committed on the girl whose hands were tied by both Mohanakrishnan and the Appellant. Thereafter, considering that the girl had been brutally raped (her anus