The judgment establishes the principle that circumstantial evidence must lead to the necessary inference of guilt, and isolated statements in a post-mortem certificate cannot be relied upon as substantive evidence.

Burn, J.

1. The appellant has been convicted by the learned Sessions Judge of Anantapur for murdering a little boy on 18th February 1987 and has been sentermed to death. This is one of those sadly too frequent cases in which children are murdered for the sake of jewellery on them. There is no reason to distrust the evidence of the mother of the little boy (P.W. l) who says that on the night of 18th February her little boy ran out to play after taking his evening meal, wearing a pair of gold bangles and a pair of gold earrings When the little boys corpse was found by the side of the donka leading from the village towards Dharmapuram, the jewels had been removed. The boy had been murdered apparently by dropping a large stone upon his head. Two blood, stained stones were found close by, one weighing about one and half maunds and the other quite a small one. There can be no doubt but that the child was murdered in this brutal fashion for the sake of the jewels which he was wearing.

2. The evidence against the appellant which the Judge has accepted is wholly of a circumstantial nature. The appellant is said to be a eunuch, who is a native apparently of Malabar; but the mother of the boy, (P.W. 1), says that he had been in the village of Vengannapalli in Gooty Taluq for the past 12 months. According to the evidence of P. Ws. 1, 2 and 3 the appellant was popular with the children of the village and that it was quite usual for them to play with him and to go hither and thither with him. P.W. 2 who lives about a furlong from the place where the body was found, said that she had seen the appellant and the little boy that night going in the direction of the place where the corpse was found. P. Ws. 3 and 4 said that sometime later they saw the appellant alone returning in the opposite direction. To all intents and purposes this is the whole of the evidence against the appellant. It was alleged by the village munsif, (P.W. 10) and another witness, (P.W. 11) that the appellant) whom the village munsif found tied up near the temple, admitted that he had committed the offence and promised to show where he had put the jewels. The village munsif says that after the appellant made this statement, he got the appellant released. He says, the appellant and the other witnesses laid him to a place near the house of Vadde Nagabusi. There the appellant played a trick upon the village munsif. He requested the village munsif to keep the other people at a distance, while he and the village munsif alone went further. The village munsif fell into the trap, went along with the appellant but the appellant after pretending to look here and there ran away and the village munsif was enable to catch him. The village munsif is corroborated, as we have mentioned by P.W. 11. But it is to be noticed that P.W. 11 is not a resident of Vengannapalli but of the village of Nemathabad, a hamlet of Gooty. No resident of the village speaks to this confession by the appellant and we think that the learned Sessions Judge was right in refusing to not upon his evidence of confession. It is curious that although the village Munsif found he appellant tied up when he got to the from pie which was after midnight, there is no evidence to inform us when the appellant was caught or where.

3. The learned Sessions Judge had relied to a great extent upon a sentence in the post-mortem certificate (Ex, B) to the affect that the Sub-Assistant Surgeon found ten ounces of undigested kora food In the stomach of the little boy. The evidence of the mother (P.W. l) is that she gave the little boy his evening meal and that he ran out at once to play. The evidence of P.W. 2 would show that the appellant and the deceased were seen together very soon after that and the fact that the food was still undigested-the learned Sessions Judge thinks-is an indication that the murder must have taken place within a very short time afterwards. For this reason, he thinks, that it is incumbent upon the appella