family members, were apparently approached by PW18 who in-formed them about the incident and later, their versions were fabricated to make the case Criminal Appeal No. 1031/2015 and others Page 17 of 26credible. Notably, when the version put forth by the interested witnesses comes under a shadow of doubt, the rule of prudence demands that the independent public witnesses must be examined and corroborating material must be gathered. More so, when public witnesses were readily available and the offence has not taken place in the bounds of closed walls. 25. Pertinently, the conduct of the eye witnesses also ap-pears to be unnatural considering that they were all relatives of the deceased. Firstly, PW18 did not try to prevent the ab-duction. Even if it is believed that he was held against a pistol, the statement regarding the existence of pistol comes as an improvement from his first information given to the police, as already noted above. Nonetheless, it is admitted that PW2, PW4 and PW5