Honble THOMAS, J.–The killers of an advocates clerk arranged a funeral pyre by themselves and cremated the victim in the sight of his bereaved widow and son. Police charge-sheeted six persons including the appellants for those acts. But the Sessions Court acquitted them all. As the High Court reversed the order of acquittal as against the appellants and convicted them for murder they filed this appeal as of right under Section 379 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (for short `the Code). We heard detailed arguments of Shri Uday Umesh Lalit, Advocate for the appellants and Ms. Anjali Doshi, Advocate for the State of Rajasthan.

(2). Munshi Singh was an advocates clerk who was murdered in the vicinity of his own house by using a pistol and other lethal weapons at about 7 P.M. on 29.6.1981. The prosecution case is the following :

(3). Appellant Hukam Singh (who was ranked as A.1 in the trial Court) and his brother Harnak Singh (A.5) and the latters sons Jaswant Singh (A.2) and Balwant Singh (A.4) had some axe to grind against deceased Munshi Singh. On the evening of the fateful day Munshi Singh alighted from a bus near his house and was preceding to his house. His son Bhupender Pal (PW.4) took over a bag of cattle-feed which his father brought from the bazar and he too was walking a little ahead of his father. All the appellants were at the bus stop variously armed. On sighting the deceased one among the appellants (Hukam Singh) made an exhortation to finish him off and then Darshan Singh (who died before the trial started) fired his pistol which hit the deceased on his back. He slumped down on the spot.

(4). Seeing the above mishap befallen his father PW.4 Bhupender Pal (PW.4) rushed to rescue him. Munshi Singhs wife on hearing the commotion flew down from her house and reached her husband. All the accused assaulted both of them as well as the deceased. Then the assailants dragged the deceased along the ground and brought him to their courtyard. They made a pyre with firewood splinters and put the body of Munshi Singh on it and set it ablaze while his wife and son were looking on aghast.

(5). The police was altered and they reached the spot but to find only the burnt remains of Munshi Singh and the smouldering embers of the dying pyre. They extinguished the flames and salvaged whatever remained on the corpse. A team of doctors conducted post-mortem examination among whom PW.8 Dr. Rajendra Kumar gave evidence that the dead body reached such a stage of burnt condition that it was impossible to form an opinion regarding the cause of death. However, they recovered a metallic substance from the skeleton which could be the embedded remnant of firing the pistol.

(6). Hukam Singh, when examined by the Sessions Judge under Section 313 of the Code admitted that he killed the deceased. But he advanced a contrary version like this : He and Darshan Singh saw the deceased grappling (with) Bharama Bai and the lady was crying. Then Darshan Singh fired at the molesting Munshi Singh. When his son Bhupender Pal (PW.4) and his wife Ram Pyari (PW.5) reached the spot Hukam Singh and his associates forcibly prevented them from removing Munshi Singh from the spot. He also admitted that the dead body of Munshi Singh was subsequently cremated by them.

(7). Neither the Sessions Court nor the High Court found the said version of Hukam Singh to be true. he did not care to examine Bharama Bai nor made any attempt to substantiate the version put forward by him. The courts therefore did not attach any credence to the aforesaid belated version put forth by Hukam Singh at the fag end of the trial.

(8). Bhupender Pal (PW.4) and Ram Pyari (PW.5) were the two eye-witnesses examined by the prosecution. The fact that they were present at the scene of occurrence could not be disputed nor the same has been disputed by the accused. They sustained injuries at the hands of the assailants and the doctor who noted such injuries had testified about them in the court as PW.9. The vers

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