Raja Azlan Shah FJ (delivering the judgment of the Court):

The appellants were charged with murder under s. 302, read with s. 34, Penal Code and after a trial extending over 15 days they were convicted on that charge and sentenced to death.

The incident giving rise to this case took place at about 9.00am on 9 April 1974 at the New Market, in the Old Town of Petaling Jaya. However, two days before that date there was an altercation between the deceased and appellant 1 and his brother who kept a pork stall opposite that of deceased, a pork-seller by profession, resulting in deceased assaulting both of them. A police report was lodged by appellant 1. With that background showing the estranged relationship between deceased and appellant 1 it is alleged by the prosecution that the appellants and probably one other made an attack with choppers and saw on the deceased. The appellants were brothers and worked and lived separately, and a point stressed to us by the prosecution and indeed to the trial court was that on that fatal morning they converged at the same time and at the same place and attacked the deceased inflicting multiple deep incised wounds, two of these being head w