SOMNATH IYER, J : Accused 1, 2, 3 and 8 who were convicted by the Sessions Judge of Gulbarga of an offence of lurking house trespass punishable under section 457, and, of an offence of murder punishable under Section 302 read with section 34 of the Penal Code, and, who were sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for a period of four years for the first offence and to imprisonment for life for the second, are the appellants before us.

2. In the village of Naribol in the District of Gulbarga there was one Doddiah who was a rich landowner owning as large an estate as 1,200 acres of laud, He died leaving behind him his minor son Sivamanappa. After the death of Doddiah, Sivamanappa's mother's sister Parvathamma assumed management of the minor's estate and continued to manage it until Sivamanappa attained majority. Sivamanappa gave Parvathamma when he resumed management of his own estate, some 60 acres of land for her own maintenance and thereafter Parvathamma was living separately from Sivamanappa.

3. Parvathamma met with her death on the night of May, 7, 1963 in consequence of serious injuries inflicted on her by someone. According to the prosecution case, she was killed by accused 1 to 6 who were charged with the offence of murder and lurking house trespass before the Court of Session. The Court of Session acquitted accused 4 and 5, and convicted accused 1, 2, 3 and 6 of both those offences. So this appeal.

4. The one astonishing feature of this case is that although according to the prosecution there were at least eight eye-witnesses every one of those eight witnesses was permitted by the Court of Session to be cross-examined, presumably on the ground that the Sessions Judge was satisfied that there was no desire on their part when they appeared before the Court of Session to speak the truth. But amongst those eight witnesses, P.W. 2 Sharanamma who was Parvathamma's sister's husband's sister, did give evidence before the Court of Session that accused 1 to 6 were the persons who killed Parvathamma and that she was able to identify those accused by their voice. The other seven witnesses gave evidence that they did not know who killed Parvathamma.

5. The Sessions Judge believed the evidence of Sharanamma that she was able to identify the persons who killed Parvathamma, and, thought that it was not unsafe to act upon the evidence of Sharanamma P.W. 2 that she was able to identify the killers by their voice. He thought that her testimony stood corroborated by other evidence in the case which gave assurance to that part of the prosecution story that at least accused 1, 2, 3 and 6 were those who killed Parvathamma. And so it was that he convicted those four persons of both the offences with which they stood charged.

6. In this appeal, Mr. Devaraj appearing for the appellants has urged that, since the prosecution story before the Court of Session had for its slender foundation no more than the undependable testimony given by P.W. 2 that she was able to identify the assailants by their voices, it was not possible for the Sessions Judge to think that the four appellants before us were the persons who killed Parvathamma. Mr. Devaraj urged a further argument that the Sessions Judge who did depend to some extent on the facts that accused 1, 2, 3 and 6 were absconding from the village of Naribol from May, 7, 1963 till June 17, 1963 in the case of accused 1, 2 and 3 and till July 12, 1963 in the case accused 6, was not right in placing any reliance at all upon any such abscondence, since it was just possible that those four accused, even if they had run away from the village, might have done so on account of panic and fear.

7. There cannot be the slightest doubt that Farvathamma was killed by someone on the night of May 7, 1963. The evidence of P.W. 10, the Medical Officer who conducted the post-mortem examination on her body on May 9, 1963 when the body was sent to him at 6-10 A.M. that day, establishes that Parvathamma had on her person at le