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Netaji Achyut Shinde (Patil) & Anr. v. The State of Maharashtra

Criminal Appeal · 2021 INSC 200Decided 23 Mar 2021
Criminal Appeal No. 121 of 2019
Justice L. Nageswara Rao · Justice Hemant Gupta · Justice S. Ravindra Bhat

Background

In 2011 in Osmanabad district, Maharashtra, the deceased, Suhas, was fatally attacked with a sword and beaten by a group of men including the three accused, amid alleged political and property-related enmity. The trial court convicted only one of the three accused (Samadhan Shinde) and acquitted the other two (Netaji Shinde and Balasaheb Shinde), largely because the first information given to police did not name all four attackers. The State and the convicted accused both appealed to the Bombay High Court, which reversed the acquittals of the other two and upheld all three convictions under Section 302 read with Section 34 IPC, leading to these appeals before the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the trial court had erred by treating an early, informal intimation to police as if it were the formal FIR and placing undue weight on its lack of detail, while ignoring consistent and credible eyewitness testimony that clearly implicated all three accused in a joint, coordinated attack. The Court reaffirmed that under Section 34 IPC, common intention can be inferred from conduct, presence at the scene, exhortations, chasing the victim together, and fleeing together, and does not require every accused to have personally struck the fatal blow. Applying settled principles on appellate review of acquittals (that reversal requires the trial court's view to be unreasonable or perverse, not merely a different possible view), the Court found the trial court's acquittal of two accused was indeed irrational given the evidence, and upheld the High Court's reversal, dismissing both appeals.

Lesson Learnt

Participants in a group attack can all be convicted for murder under the principle of "common intention" even if only one person struck the fatal blow, as long as evidence shows they acted together with a shared purpose; an early informal information to police is not the same as the formal FIR and courts should not discount a prosecution case merely because that first intimation lacked full detail.

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

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