JUDGMENT 1. The facts of this case are somewhat involved and the explanation of the Magistrate in reply to the rule does not tend to make matters clearer. As far as we understand the case as put before us by learned counsel for the Petitioners, on a complaint made for a compoundable offence, the complainant offered to put in a petition desiring to withdraw the case as compounded. At first the Magistrate hesitated to receive this petition apparently on the ground, that he desired first to try the case out, but on his attention being drawn to the case of Mahomed Ismail v. Faizuddi 3 C. W. N. 548 (1899), he received the petition of compromise and acquitted the accused under trial. It so happened, however, that in the course of the proceedings so taken, he had summoned two other persons to attend and an objection was taken on their behalf to the continuance of the proceedings against them on the ground that the offence had been compounded. The Magistrate, however, refused to stay proceedings against them and, in consequence, the parties concerned have moved this Court and obtained this rule. It seems to us that the Magistrate's order is erroneous. If, in the case of a compoundable offence, the complainant intimates to the Court that he has compounded it and desires to withdraw his complaint, the order passed by the Magistrate allowing the withdrawal is in respect to the offence and not solely in regard to the persons actually under trial at the time, and it seems to us that, in so providing, the law contemplates that all the accused persons should be under trial at the same time before a judicial officer unless in some exceptional circumstances such as their absconding, or sickness or some such reason, the attendance of some of them cannot be obtained. In this case it does not appear why the Magistrate did not issue process against these two persons, the Petitioners before us, who were named in the complaint, at the same time that he issued process against the other accused in respect to whom he received the petition compounding the offence. 2. We think, therefore, that the complaint is compounded in respect of the offence committed so as to include the parties who are now under trial and that further proceedings as against them must be stayed.