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Ex. Ct. Mahadev vs. The Director General, Border Security Force & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2022 INSC 644Decided 14 Jun 2022
Civil Appeal No. 2606 of 2012
B.R. Gavai · Hima Kohli · J.K. Maheshwari

Background

A BSF constable posted at the India-Bangladesh border in Tripura was convicted by a General Security Force Court (GSFC) in 2007 of murder for shooting and killing a civilian, Nandan Deb, during a patrol near the border, and was sentenced to life imprisonment and dismissed from service. His defence, that he fired in the exercise of the right of private self-defence after being surrounded by an armed group of intruders crossing the border, was rejected by the GSFC, the statutory appellate authority, and later the Delhi High Court, largely based on medical evidence about the trajectory of the bullets suggesting the victim had been made to crouch before being shot. The convict appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court re-examined the eyewitness testimony (of a fellow constable on patrol) and the medical evidence, and found the uneven, sloped terrain of the rubber plantation offered an equally plausible alternative explanation for the downward bullet trajectory: that the appellant fired from a naturally elevated position on the slope, not that he forced the victim to crouch. Considering evidence that the border area saw frequent armed incursions by smugglers, that the deceased was on a BSF list of known smugglers with foreign currency recovered from him, and weapons found near the body, the Court held the preponderance of probabilities favoured genuine private self-defence in a sudden, threatening confrontation. It therefore held the offence was culpable homicide not amounting to murder (Exception 2 to Section 300 IPC, punishable under Section 304 IPC) rather than murder, and, since the appellant had already served over eleven years in custody before being released on bail in 2016, held that period sufficient punishment and set him free.

Lesson Learnt

A conviction for murder can be reduced to culpable homicide not amounting to murder where the evidence, viewed holistically (terrain, circumstances of sudden confrontation, and alternative explanations for forensic findings), supports a genuine plea of the right of private self-defence rather than deliberate killing.

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

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