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(f) The circumstances that two persons from the side of the eyewitness lost their lives and that four other eye-

witnesses belonging to the same family received injuries are sufficient to suggest that it was the party of the appellants who were the aggressors even though appellants Nos. 1 to 3 were also injured during the occurrence; and the fact that all the eye-witnesses were unreliable in relation to the dragging part of the prosecution story is immaterial, their testimony being otherwise credible. In this connection it has to be borne in mind that the party of the accused were able to inflict serious injuries on their opponents and themselves escaped with comparatively a minor beating. There was thus no right of private defence available to the accused.

8. In the High Court all the three judges who considered the appeal fully reappraised the evidence and while Vaidya and Apte, JJ., arrived at more or less the same conclusions as the learned Sessions Judge, Sawant, J., recorded diametrically opposed findings although he found Bhimrao Kadam PW-20 to be a wholly independent and therefore a reliable witness. Those findings were :

(i) There is no reliable evidence whatsoever to support the prosecution case that the accused were the aggressors. on the other hand, the following five circumstances point to the contrary :
(d) Bodies of the persons injured on the side of the deceased were found Lying nearer the house of the accused than that of their opponents.
(e) Appellants Nos. 1 to 3 also received injuries which were sufficiently serious and numerous.
(ii) Merely because two of the opponents of the appellants died and the number of persons injured on their side was greater than on that of the appellants, it will not follow that the latter were the aggressors.

9. The case has been argued before us at great length by learned counsel for the parties and the two main questions requiring determination are:

(A) Has the prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt that the party of the appellants were the aggressors and that it is not made out on the record that the latter may well have acted in exercise of the right of private defence? (B) If the answer to question (A) is in the affirmative, whether the participation of all the appellants in the occurrence is satisfactorily made out ?