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Kishan Singh alias Actor v. State of Uttaranchal (now Uttarakhand) & Anr.

Criminal Appeal · 2019 INSC 276Decided 26 Feb 2019
Criminal Appeal No. 389 of 2019
Justice R. Banumathi · Justice R. Subhash Reddy

Background

The appellant and the deceased, close friends who used to drink together, were both drunk when a quarrel broke out between the appellant and his wife. The appellant swung an axe at his wife, but the deceased intervened and was struck instead, dying of his injuries. The Trial Court convicted the appellant of murder under Section 302 IPC and sentenced him to life imprisonment, but the High Court of Uttarakhand modified the conviction to the lesser offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder (Section 304 Part-I IPC) while keeping the life sentence; the appellant then appealed to the Supreme Court only on the question of sentence.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court agreed that the High Court had correctly downgraded the conviction, since the evidence showed no premeditation: the fatal blow was meant for the appellant's wife and struck the deceased only because he intervened, and the conviction rested on an extra-judicial confession plus recovery of blood-stained clothes and the axe. Limiting itself to the question of sentence (for which notice had been issued), the Court found the circumstances warranted leniency and reduced the sentence from life imprisonment to ten years' imprisonment, while upholding the conviction itself.

Lesson Learnt

Where a death results from an unintended, un-premeditated act, such as a blow aimed at one person accidentally striking and killing another who intervened, courts distinguish this from murder and may significantly reduce the sentence even while upholding a culpable-homicide conviction.

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

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