C.G.SURI, J.

1. On the afternoon of 31-3-1971, Shri Raniodh Singh (since deceased) of village Badni Kalan. Police Station Nihalsinghwala in Ferozepore district was travelling in a car and when he had gone about a furlong or two beyond Phulewala Road culvert, his car was waylaid and he was murdered with fire weapons. His son Kanwar Iqbal Singh, who claimed to have been travelling in the same car and who had some simple blunt weapon injuries on his person, lodged a report at 3.50 P.M. at police Station Bashapuraria which had jurisdiction in the area. The occurrence was described to have taken place about twenty minutes earlier and according to the story as given in that first information report, the deceased and his party had set out in three motor vehicles as the betrothal of the daughter of the deceased was to take place that day in village Mudki. Fourteen Persons belonging to different villages in the districts of Ludhiana. Sangrur and Ferozepore were named as the assailants and it was alleged that they had come to the scene of ambush in two cars which were seen parked by the road side and that these assailants had opened fire on the deceaseds car from both sides of the road. Balbir Singh. the driver of the car. had lost control and had crashed against a tree and had also sustained a head injury. Out of the named assailants, six persons had been arrested within a fortnight of the occurrence and had been lingering in jail until the police report (chalan) under Section 173 of the Code of Criminal Procedure had been filed in Court on 25-16-1971. There is nothing on record to suggest that they have been granted bail to the present day. During the interval between their arrest and the filing of the chalan. they had been produced before the Ilaqa Magistrates for remands to police custody or to judicial lock-up very nearly a score of times and the Magistrate had directed on 16-10-1971, at the time of granting the remand up to 29-10-1971, that the police should expedite the submission of the chalan. The Additional Sessions Judge had also directed, while rejecting a bail application of these six accused, that the chalan should be filed before 25-10-1971. The Station House Officer-in-charge of Police Station Baghapurana had accordingly complied with these directions in actually filing the chalan on 25-10-1971 even though the higher police officers including Sarv Shri Vidya Sagar Mehta, D.S.P. and Beniwaj. S.P. (C.I.D.) had taken over the investigations of this case in accordance with the instructions issued in June. 1971, by the Deputy Inspector General (C.I.D.) of Police, who had ordered further in August. 1971 that the chalan was not to be presented in Court unless his orders had been obtained in the first instance. The D.I.G. had also recommended that warrants of arrest issued by the Court against some of the accused should be got cancelled. There were references in the police diary that Shri Vidya Sagar, D.S.P. had visited some places including Calcutta in connection with the investigations of this case. It may appear from the police diaries and many other documents on the lower Courts records that most of the persons named in the first information report as assailants were working for gain in Calcutta. The chalan filed on 25-10-1971 was against the six persons who had been arrested more than six months earlier and the names of the other eight were shown as absconders in the chalan. It cannot be said, however, that these eight persons were really fugitives from the law even though the Court had at one stage issued warrants for their arrest and had started proceedings under Sections 87 and 88 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. This would be evident from the fact that the informant Kanwar Iqbal Singh and his brother Bhupinder Singh had been making applications to the Ilaqa Magistrates for taking contempt proceedings against Shri Mehta. D.S.P. complaining that most of these persons, shown as absconders in the police chalan had