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Constable 907 Surendra Singh v. State Of Uttarakhand

Criminal Appeal · 2025 INSC 114Decided 28 Jan 2025
Crl.A. No.-000355-000355 - 2013 (with Criminal Appeal No. 788 of 2013)
Justice B.R. Gavai · Justice Augustine George Masih

Background

During a police operation intercepting a suspected liquor-smuggling car near Rishikesh in 2004, Head Constable Jagdish Singh fired a shot from a police vehicle that fatally struck a woman travelling as a passenger in an unrelated Maruti car nearby. The trial court convicted Jagdish Singh alone for murder but acquitted his three fellow police personnel (including Constable Surendra Singh, Constable Surat Singh, and driver Ashad Singh Negi) for lack of evidence that they shared his intent to kill. The Uttarakhand High Court later reversed that acquittal and convicted all three companions too, reasoning that merely being present in the same vehicle was enough to convict them with the aid of Section 34 IPC (common intention).

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court reiterated the well-settled, narrow grounds on which an appellate court may overturn a trial court's acquittal (only where the acquittal is patently perverse, ignores material evidence, or where no view but guilt is reasonably possible) and found none of those grounds present here. It held that convicting a person under Section 34 IPC requires proof of a genuine "meeting of minds" and a pre-arranged common intention to commit the specific crime, not mere presence alongside the actual shooter in the same vehicle. Since the prosecution had produced no evidence that the three appellants shared Jagdish Singh's intent to fire on or kill the deceased, the Court restored the trial court's acquittal and set aside the High Court's conviction; a separate appeal by Jagdish Singh himself was disposed of as abated because he had since died.

Lesson Learnt

Being physically present with someone who commits a crime is not the same as sharing their criminal intent: a conviction for "common intention" under Section 34 IPC requires actual proof of a pre-planned shared purpose, not just guilt by association or proximity.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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