The main legal point established is that the main offender can be convicted under Sections 201 to 203 of the Indian Penal Code, and the accused must be treated as a stranger to the crime for the purpose of calculating the punishment.

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 hemorrhage. He was of opinion that that was the result of blows by sticks or stones on the head. He found no signs or symptoms of poisonous bite or sting.

2. The charge of murder was not pressed against the accused in the Trial Court, and the learned Sessions Judge held that the evidence did not prove that it was the accused who inflicted the injuries on his wife. He held, however, that he must have known who inflicted them on his wife and that his story to the Village Munsif was a false one, intended to screen the real offender. He, therefore, convicted him under Sections 201 and 203, Indian Penal Code.

3. The learned Counsel for the defence raises a point of fact and a point of law. The point of fact is that as the injuries on the woman were hidden under her hair the accused did not . genuinely know that she had been assaulted. But we do not think that there is any substance in this. For, the woman having been assaulted, the accuseds story that she cried out she had been stung cannot be true. She must have cried out that she was being beaten and accused must have known that.

4. The point of law is that unless the Court is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that accused was not himself the murderer, he cannot be convicted under Sections 201 and 203. This rests upon a proposition, affirmed in several rulings of various High Courts, that Sections 201 to 203, Indian Penal Code, have no application to the person who actually committed the main offence mentioned in the sections, and that the person who committed the main, offence cannot be himself found guilty of causing evidence of that offence to disappear or of giving false information about it. The earliest pronouncement on this point was in 1871 in a case Reg v. Kashinath Dinkar (1871) 8 Bom. H.C.R. (Cr.)126 and this ruling has been followed, mostly without discussion or comment as if the proposition were self-evident, in various other cases. (Cf. Empress of India v. Kishna (1880) I.L.R. 2 A. 713. Queen-Empress v. Dungar (1886) I.L.R. 8 A. 252 Torap Ali v. Queen-Empress(1895) I.L.R. 22 C 638 and Emperor v. Ghanasham. (1906) 8 Bom. L.R. 538 The only pronouncement of this High Court on this subject which has been traced is in a parenthesis and obiter dictum at page 277 of Ramaswami Gounden v. Emperor (1903) I.L.R. 27 M. 271:14 M.L J. .226. Nowhere is the ratio deci-dendi of Reg v. Kashinath Dinkar (1871) 8 Bom. H.C.R. (Cr.) 126 examined. It seems to us to rest on a petitio principii. The reason given is that "as there is no law now. which obliges a criminal to give information which would convict himself, it is evident that Sections 202 and 203 could not apply to a person who committed that offence, that is, the offence which he know had been committed." Obviously if there is no law to that effect then Sections 20