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1. This is an appeal by the 1st accused in a case tried by the learned Sessions Judge of Tinnevelly with a jury for an offence under Section 395, Indian Penal Code, in which the appellant and seven others were convicted and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. The sentence on the appellant is six months and a fine of Rs. 200 and six months more in default. The facts alleged were as follows: The appellant is the accountant of the Isanam Mutt to which the Murappanad village belongs. The other accused in the Lower Court were mostly Pallars residing in the Paracheri in that village. The Mutt had engaged the Pallars to repair a breach in a channel. On the 11th August, 1930, the Pallars quarrelled about the distribution of wages between the 2nd accused in the Lower Court and the father of the prosecution 1st witness. The dispute was referred to the appellant who asked that Rs. 10 should be deposited by both parties as caution money to abide by his decision by 3 p.m. on the 12th. The father of P.W. 1 did not turn up at the time nor did he pay. The son (P.W. 1) said that his father had gone to fetch the money. The appellant thought that it was a falsehood and that the father of the prosecution witness was trying to back out of the proposed settlement. It is alleged that at 5 p.m. that day (12th August, 1930) the appellant and his co-accused Pallars went to the hut where P.W. 1 was cooking. The appellant stood on the bund of the channel and asked for P.W. l's father and was told that he had not come back. Thereupon the appellant is said to have lost his temper and told his Pallar followers, the other accused, to pull off the roof of P.W. 1's house and to loot the contents of the house. They are alleged to have done so after binding

2. P.W. 1's hands with his own cloth. After the looting, P.W. 1 is alleged to have been kept bound at the same place by two of the Pallars and not allowed to go away until raid-day on the 13th.

3. The conviction of the appellant is said to be based on a unanimous verdict of the jury. If so, it cannot be disturbed unless there was material misdirection or other material irregularity at the trial which would vitiate the verdict and judgment.

4. Counsel for the appellant has urged that the charge to the jury is vitiated by misdirections (1) as to the explanation of the offence of dacoity, (2) by reason of misstatements of the prosecution evidence in material particulars, and (3) on account of general unfairness which did not leave the jury any real choice to exercise an independent judgment on the facts. He also complains that the sentence is vitiated by the fact that the verdict of the jury first given was one of acquittal of the appellant and that the subsequent verdict of guilty was given in circumstances in which the jury had no power to vary their first verdict and the Judge was not entitled to accept any variation. In the view we take; on this last point it is not necessary to consider the objection as to misdirection. The objection as to the verdict seems to us to be well founded. From the judgment it appears that what happened was that after the learned Judge had charged the jury on the law and on the facts the jury returned the following unanimous verdict: