Bombay High Court: The Division Bench of S.S. Shinde and R.G. Avachat, JJ., pronounced an order while extending the provisions of Section 335 CrPC to the appellant in order to detain him in Yerwada Mental Hospital and setting aside the impugned order of conviction and sentence under Section 302 IPC.
The present challenge was made to the judgment and order passed by learned Additional Sessions Judge, Udgir. Appellant had been convicted for the offence of murder, punishable under Section 302 IPC.
Factual matrix of the present case is that the deceased was a daily wage earner and at times used to sell Pepsi candies as a hocker in summer. On one such day, appellant asked the deceased for a Pepsi candy for free but the deceased refused for the same. Result of the said circumstances was that the appellant picked up a stone and lynched the deceased due to which on reaching the hospital the deceased lost his life.
Appellant was arrested after the above-said facts took place in the form of an FIR filed by deceased’s uncle. Trial Court framed charge and appellant pleaded not guilty and claimed to be tried. His defence was that of insanity.
Learned Counsel for the appellant stated that appellant did not have intention to kill the deceased and therefore it would at most be an offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, punishable under Section 304 Part-B of the Indian Penal Code. On appreciation of the evidence in the case, the trial court found the appellant to have caused culpable homicide and found it to be a case of murder. In the trial court’s view, appellant failed to make out defence of his insanity.
Conclusion & Analysis
The High being not in agreement with the trial court’s finding addressed the issue of legal insanity with an in-depth analysis of Section 299 IPC, Sections 105 and 101 Evidence Act and reference was taken from the case of Dahyabhai Chhaganbhai Thakkar v. State of Gujarat, AIR 1964 SC 1563.
Thus, in light of the above stated, along with circumstances of the case, it was stated that there was no enmity between the deceased and the appellant and appellant had lynched the deceased for such a trivial issue. Further, as for representations regarding appellant’s mental health, PW-8 had testified that once appellant along with other villagers had visited a temple where he had hit his wife with a watermelon for no reason. Therefore in Court’s opinion, such acts could not be attributed to the person of sound mind.
Court stated that “the appellant may not have been found medically insane. We, however, found him legally insane. The fact that none of the family members of the appellant stood by him during the proceeding before the trial court speaks in volume.”
Disagreeing with the decision of the trial court, the High Court held that the appellant did not know the nature of the act that would otherwise have constituted the offence of murder, and therefore impugned order is set aside by declaring the appellant legally insane and detaining him in Yerwada Mental Hospital as per the provisions of Section 335 CrPC. [Balaji Kishan Nagarwad v. State of Maharashtra, 2019 SCC OnLine Bom 116, decided on 30-01-2019]
