Somasundaram, J.-The Additional Sessions Judge of Salem has found the accused guilty of murder of one Sellappa Goundan, uncle of the accused and sentenced him to death.

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[After discussing the evidence and finding the accused guilty of murder His Lordship proceeded.]

The learned advocate (for the accused) raised a point that the Sessions Judge in this case has not complied with the provisions of section 342, Criminal Procedure Code and therefore the trial is vitiated. In the Sessions Court the statement made by the accused before the committal Court was read out to him and, after marking it as Exhibit P-5 and recording his answer that it is correct, the Sessions Judge simply asked the accused whether he wished to say anything more. The accused said he had nothing to add; and then the learned Judge proceeded to ask if the accused had any defence witnesses, to which the accused said that he had none. In the committal Court all the circumstances that appeared against the accused in the evidence given before the committing magistrate were put to the accused and his answers were obtained from him. There is not a single circumstance on which that Court could rely on against the accused that was not put to the accused. In the Sessions Court no circumstance different from what appeared in the evidence in the committing Court is found in the evidence given before the learned Sessions Judge. There has been no variation and the little variation if any was only in favour of the accused; so that all the circumstances that appeared in the evidence in the Sessions Court had been put to the accused by the committing magistrate as the same appeared in the evidence in the other Court and the answers of the accused obtained thereon. The question for consideration is whether a Sessions Judge should again put all the questions to the accused and record the answers from him. The learned advocate relied on two decisions in support of his contention, one of which is the decision of a Bench of this Court in Sagili Soleomon, In re1 and the other a decision of the Supreme Court in Tara Singh v. The State 2 . In view of the decision of the Supreme Court, it is unnecessary to refer to the decision of this Court reported in Sagili Solomon, In re1. In the case before the Supreme Court the scope of section 342, Criminal Procedure Code was considered; and the learned Judges pointed out how the circumstances which the Sessions Judge relied on did not appear in the evidence before the committal Court, but appeared only in the evidence before the Sessions Judge. This is what their Lordships say at page 523 of the journal (only the relevant portion is extracted here):

"Now this was evidence which was recorded exclusively in the Sessions Court. The eye witnesses before the Sessions Judge had resiled from the previous statements which they made in the committal proceedings. Accordingly a questioning by the committing magistrate would not and could not cover the point made here, and naturally, the Magistrate has not questioned the appellant about that circumstance. He next relied on the evidence of these witnesses as recorded in the Court of the ommitting magistrate. One point he used against them was the evidence of motive which these witnesses supplied in. the committal proceeding. The appellant was not told what that evidence was nor was he asked to explain it. He was questioned about this motive in the committal proceedings by the committing magistrate, but even there he was not told who had given the evidence and the material on which the committing magistrate relied to establish the presence of motive was not disclosed.

The Sessions Judge also relied on the fact that the appellant had confessed to the three eye witnesses that he had killed his uncle and injured his father. There is not a single question regarding that either in the committing magistrate’s Court or in the Sessions Court.

Another ground on which the Sessions Judge proceeded was the extra-judi

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