1. The appellant has been convicted by the learned Sessions Judge of Bellary under Section 201, Indian Penal Code, for giving false evidence about the murder of his wife in order to screen the real offender, and also under Section 203 for giving false information about the murder. He was also himself charged with the actual murder of his wife, but was acquitted on that. The facts of the case briefly were:

On the 12th August, 1929, at about 10 a.m., the deceased woman took food to her husband. P.W. 4 saw her there. He next saw her being carried in an unconscious state by the accused and his brother towards her house. P.W. 5 saw people in her house applying restoratives to her, while the accused and his brother were giving out that the woman had been stung by a scorpion or bitten by a snake. She died at 4 p.m. The accused himself made the report to the Village Munsif (P.W. 6), saying that he suspected that she had been stung. The womans father (P.W. 8) was suspicious and reported to the police who sent the body for post mortem. The Medical Officer, P.W. 1, found on the body four contusions three of them on the skull, and on dissecting he found there had been cerebral hemorrhag