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"5. We have very carefully gone through the judgments of both the courts below and with respect we find that notwithstanding the concurrent judgments thereof we are unable to sustain the convictions of the appellants on any count. It is well settled that this Court would be slow to interfere with the findings of facts recorded by the courts below which are based on appreciation of evidence but we are of the considered view that the Sessions Court as well as the High Court have mechanically read the evidence of the eyewitnesses and totally ignored the well-known principle of appreciation of evidence. We have very carefully gone through the evidence of PW 2, PW 3, PW 5 and PW 6 who claimed to be the eyewitnesses. If we compare the evidence of these eyewitnesses it is immediately noticed that their evidence is just like a parrot telling what is taught. Even the omissions, contradictions and improvements are identical. The claim of these eyewitnesses is totally unbelievable when they testified that they had gone to the place of occurrence. The distance between their houses and the place of the occurrence is said to be one furlong. It was night time and the only light available was that of the moon. A festival "Ganga Dashara" was being celebrated in the village and these witnesses claimed that they heard the noise of marpeet by sticks and, therefore, they woke up. During the cross-examination they tried to explain by saying that they were not fully asleep and, therefore, could hear the noise of marpeet. They claimed that they had not consumed any liquor. Their further claim was that when they went to the place of the occurrence they all had earlier met at a place which was in front of the house of Sukhnath (PW 5). The claim of Sukhnath was that he overheard the talk between other eyewitnesses and, therefore, he came out and went along with them to the place of the occurrence. The claim made by these eyewitnesses in their examination-in-chief was that they had actually seen the assault on Deosharan by the appellants but during cross- examination they admitted that they did not see the actual assault as they were prevented from going to the place of the occurrence by the appellants. The talk between the appellants and these four eyewitnesses was again absolutely identical without adding a word "less" or "more". In addition to the above, the salient feature of their evidence is that after some time they again went to the place of the occurrence but they could not see the appellants as well as the dead body. They searched for the appellants during the whole night. This claim of these eyewitnesses is difficult to accept because according to them, they had already been threatened by saying that if they made any noise they would meet the same fate like Deosharan. The assertion of these witnesses that they had gone to the place of the occurrence during that night appeared to us a cock and bull story. Another circumstance that weighed with us is that despite such a ghastly attack on Deosharan, none of them ever thought of going to the father of Deosharan to inform him about the incident. They also did not go to the police station during the same night to lodge the first information report. Furthermore, the story of these eyewitnesses as regards the assault on Deosharan is also not corroborated from the medical evidence. Dr S.S. Pankera (PW 4) had noticed three external injuries on the head and many small injuries on the whole chest, backside and both feet, knees and below the knees. Dr S.S. Pankera further opined that the dead body was mutilated and there was a fracture on occipital portion and blood clot was present inside the skull. One has only to test this evidence on the touchstone of probability that when the five appellants were simultaneously attacking Deosharan with the sticks in their hands, of which the noise was heard from a distance of one furlong, there ought to have been many more injuries on the dead body of Deosharan. After going through the evidence of these four star witnesses who constituted the backbone of the prosecution story, we are of the considered view that in all probabilities it was a blind murder."