The prosecution must prove the guilt of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt. If the prosecution evidence is unreliable or inconsistent, the accused must be acquitted.

Ramnandan Prasad, J.

1. Sheo Kumar Prasad Sharma Alias Prabhat Kumar Singh, appellant of Cr. App. No. 451/87 has been convicted under Sec.302 of the Indian Penal Code (hereinafter referred to as the Code) and has been sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for life. The two appellants of Cr. App. No. 449/87 to writ, Ramjee Pandey and Rambrichh Singh, have been convicted under Sec.302 read with Sec.34 of the Code and have been sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for life. It appears that six more persons were put on trial along with these three appellants, but they have been acquitted by the learned additional Sessions Judge who tried the case.

2. The prosecution case, as disclosed in the fardbeyan of Janardhan Pd. Singh (P.W.7), on the basis of which the present case was instituted, is that on 11-8-1981 in the morning his brother Sadhu Sharan Singh was returning home from Warsaliganj in a bus know as "Sheo Shambhu". This bus happened to reach near Badi More at about 10 A.M. and was forced to stop there as the rond was found cut. As soon as the bus stopped, these three appellants, who were armed with a rifle each entered into the bus and started searching out Sadhu Saran Singh, who was sitting on the staff seat in the front portion of the bus. On seeing him, appellants Prabhat Kumar Singh asked the two other two appellants to pull him out and to kill him. Accordingly, those two appellants forcibly took out Sadhu Saran Singh, but he managed to flee away after rescuing himself. Thereafter, all the three appellants chased him and, ultimately, Prabhat Kumar Singh succeeded in shooting him down from his rifle, as a result of which he fell down near Saidi Bagicha. It is said that the three appellants thereafter thrashed his face etc. with the butt end of their rifles. The cause of this occurrence, according to Janardhan Pd. Singh, is that appellant Prabhat Kumar Singh wanted to extend the main road towards his village Darbeshpur which was objected to by the deceased Sadhu Saran Singh.

3. Nobody went to the police to inform about this incident until A.K. Singh (P.W.12), officer-in-charge of Griyak police station happened to reach there of his own at 2. P.M. At that hour he recorded the fardbeyan of Janardhan Pd. Singh in the Saidi Bagicha itself and himself took up investigation. Eventually after completing investigation the police submitted charge-sheet against these three appellants as well as six others, who were in due course put on trial with the result as stated above.

4. It appears that the prosecution developed the case sometime after the institution of the case making allegations against the aforesaid six accused persons, namely, Arun Kumar Singh Alias Gita Singh, Anil Kumar Sharma, Baleshwar Singh, Janardan Pd. Singh, Awadhesh Kumar and Lakshmi Narain Singh, also, A case was made out on behalf of the prosecution to show that these six persons were also along with the three appellants, when they had entered into the bus for searching out the deceased. These six persons are also said to armed with rifles and guns and they were asking people not to go near the deceased by standing on the road and they were also instigating appellant Prabhat Kumar Singh to kill Sadhu Saran Singh. They were telling the people that they would also be killed if they tried to save Sadhu saran Singh. The learned Additional Sessions Judge did not accept this part of the prosecution case as true, as, according to him, this was an after-thought and a subsequent development. He, accordingly, acquitted all these six accused persons and that is the end of the matter so far they are concerned.

5. The defence of the appellants was that the deceased Sadhu Saran Singh was a man of questionable character. In the previous night he had gone to Saidi Bagichha for committing rape and it was in this connection that he was murdered there by somebody in the night itself, it has been alleged that these appellants have been implicated falsely on acco