NATHA SINGH Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from two judgments and orders of the High Court of judicature at Lahore dated 7-6- 1945, which dismissed the appeals of the appellants, and confirmed the sentences of death passed on them, by the judgment and order, dated 9-2-1945, of the Sessions Judge, Amritsar, Their Lordships have already announced that they will humbly advise His Majesty that the appeal be dismissed and they now give their reasons.

(2.) The ground upon which special leave to appeal was granted was the allegation that evidence that the appellants had committed a murder other than that with which they were charged was wrongly admitted, and this has been the principal point argued on their behalf.

(3.) The appellants were tried and convicted on a charge of having murdered one Karnail Singh on 19-9-1944. There were four alleged eye-witnesses of the murder, namely, the approver Qadir, who said that he had been with the appellants, Surain Singh, an uncle, Mt. Gurmej Kaur the wife, and Jita, a servant, of the murdered man, Karnail Singh had a brother, Bhan Singh, whose wife was said to have been in illicit intimacy with the appellant Natha Singh, and Karnail Singh is said to have objected to this intimacy. There seems no reason to doubt the existence of this intimacy, nor that it had occasioned ill-will between Karnail Singh and his brother on the one hand and Natha Singh on the other. The other appellant, Budha Singh, was a friend of Natha Singh.