JUDGMENT

1. In this case two men appeal, one Ramzani against a conviction for murder and one Shafiq Ahmad against a conviction for rioting, he having been found to have been the ring leader in an undoubted fight. Seven other persons were put upon their trial. Six of them were convicted and sentenced and have not appealed and one Bashir was acquitted. But in the view which we take of this case, it is not necessary to go into the question of differentiating between the eases of the various accused. We propose to take a broader view of the matter a great deal of which is fatally clear. In a group of villages or hamlets in which there are rival zamindars and apparently rival factions, Mt. Mango was a tenant of two brothers, Usman and Sultan, who lived at a village named Malpur, a mile away. Sultan was the man who was killed. Mt. Mango is the woman over whom the trouble began. She was living with the wife of her nephew who had been sent to jail, and there is no doubt that for some reasons, which it is unnecessary to pursue further, these two women had made up their minds to leave the house where they were living and give up their tenancy under the zamindar. For this purpose they made arrangements with Ramzani, the man who has been convicted of murder and who lives in another village about the same distance away and in another zamindari, and he collected two carts and a large body of men carrying lathis to go to Mt. Mango's village to remove the woman and their goods. There is no doubt that in going as they did, they showed that they anticipated the possibility of an attack which might compel them to defend not only the women but themselves. The party, as it proceeded on its journey might to a stranger have presented the appearance of a small armed force, but in itself there would be no harm in that. The learned Judge says that the party was admittedly quite beyond the necessity of the occasion if it had gone on a peaceful mission or no resistance was apprehended. This is not quite a correct statement of the position. It was beyond what was necessary unless it had reason to fear interruption or attack. The event showed that it had good reason to fear interruption or attack, but it was engaged in a perfectly lawful purpose and was a lawful assembly. Ramzani had a perfect right to go with as many men as he pleased to take the women away. Neither Sultan nor his brother had any right to prevent it, not any reason to be present there, and if they had not interfered, the party would have gone to the village and back and quietly removed the woman and their goods. We, therefore, start with this fact established that they were a lawful assembly engaged in a lawful purpose. On a careful examination of the evidence for the defence we have come to the conclusion that the account of the matter given by them and their witnesses is much more trustworthy than that of the prosecution witnesses. We are fortified in this view by the opinion of the learned Judge formed about the place where the fight ultimately took place. Except for the purpose of testing the credibility of the witnesses, the place is quite immaterial. The Judge thinks that the witnesses for the defence were telling the truth about this, and it is obvious that there was no motive for them to state an untruth about the place; while the Judge has pointed out that the prosecution had a motive for altering the place, which they did. There is no doubt that -Sultan appeared upon the scene either with or without his brother and with an appreciable number of companions. The first report made by his brother subsequently is a very disingenous document, in which, reading between the lines, it is easy to see that the author of the report is carefully avoiding awkward circumstances from the point of view of his brother and preparing the way of meeting the case which he knows is going to be raised by the defence. He goes so far as to start by saying that the police were at the bottom of the whole th