JUDGMENT

1. Their Lordships after referring to the incident and commending the bravery of the Police and the admirably way in which the lower Court and Counsel had handled the case, proceeded:

2. The charges against all the accused were six in number. There was a seventh charge affecting twenty-six only out of the entire number and an eighth charge affecting the same twenty-six and twelve others in addition. These charges are set forth in detail in the opening pages of the judgment under appeal and we do not propose to recapitulate them. They admit, however, of a certain classification. We have already spoken of the crowd which attacked the Police as an assembly of persons moving in a certain formation and animated by a definite purpose. It is an essential part of the case for the prosecution that the nucleus of this crowd consisted of a body of perhaps 1,000, perhaps 1,500 persons, which set forth from the little village of Dumri Khurd, situated some two miles or rather less from Chaura Police Station. It is alleged as against all the accused persons that they formed part of this original assembly at the village of Dumri and that before their departure from that place, they had entered into an agreement amongst themselves to do certain illegal acts of such a nature as to render them liable to punishment u/s 120B of the Indian Penal Code. This has been spoken of in argument as the "conspiracy charge" and we propose to refer to it hereafter under that designation. For the present, the point which we have to note is that it was an integral part of the case for the prosecution in the Court below that the events which occurred later in the day, in the neighbourhood of Chaura Police Station, followed upon this alleged criminal conspiracy at Dumri Khurd in such a manner and were so connected therewith not merely by sequence of time, but by the link of causation as to make the conspiracy at Dumri and the subsequent assault on the Policemen at Chaura parts of the same transaction, within the meaning of that expression in Section 239 of the Cr. P.C.

3. The next five charges, Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, relate to what took place on the afternoon of the 4th of February 1922, at Chaura Police Station and in its immediate neighbourhood. They may be described as different presentations of one and the same charge in lesser or in more aggravated forms. They suit with the second charge, which simply alleges as against all the accused persons that they were members of an unlawful assembly, within the meaning of the definition in Section 141 of the Indian1 Penal Code, at the time when force or, violence was used by members of the said assembly, in prosecution of the common objects thereof. This charge is, therefore, laid u/s 147, Indian Penal Code. It is further the case for the prosecution that the, force or violence thus used extended to the murder of twenty-three Police and chaukidars, the plundering of property belonging to the said officials and to Government, the destruction by fire of the Police Station buildings and the voluntary causing of hurt to various Police and ckaukidars. We have, therefore, charges drawn up under Sections 302, 395, 436 and 332, Indian Penal Code, read in each case with Section 149 of the same Code.

4. The seventh and eighth charges', which affect some of the accused persons only, may be grouped together. They deal with the damage inflicted on the Railway line and on the telegraph wires and are framed respectively u/s 126 of the Railways Act IX of 1890 and u/s 25 of the Indian Telegraph Act No. XIII of 1885.

5. There is, as a matter of fact, one further charge of such slight importance that in had been almost overlooked. It affects a single one of the accused, the appellant Sikhari, and is framed u/s 412, Indian Penal Code. In substance it refers back to the charge of dacoity u/s 395/149, Indian Penal Code, in which Sikhari was already involved, and alleges against him, in the alternative, that, if he was not actually conce