Happell, J.

1. The appellant has been convicted by the learned Sessions Judge of South Kanara for the murder of a certain Poovu Hengsu on the 17th of July last, and has been sentenced to death.

2. Poovu Hengsu was the elder sister of the accuseds mother, and so his aunt. She was undoubtedly murdered in the middle of the day on the verandah of her house. The medical evidence is that she had been strangled to death and had received other injuries--a contusion on the left side of the chin and a contusion covering the whole of the left cheek, under which the left superior maxilla and the lower jaw were fractured. Poovu Hengsu had been in the habit of going to Bombay to visit relatives and five or six years ago she had gone there for two years, leaving the accuseds mother in charge of her house in Haleyangadi. During her absence the accuseds mother failed to pay the rent to the landlord, and on her return she removed the accused and his mother from the house. After this episode they were on bad terms, and on the occasion of a marriage in Poovu Hengsus house a few months before her death the accused and his mother were not invited. There is no reason to distrust the evidence on the