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Omanakuttan v. The State of Kerala

Criminal Appeal · 2019 INSC 661Decided 9 May 2019
Criminal Appeal No. 873 of 2019
Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre · Justice Dinesh Maheshwari

Background

In 1997, the appellant poured acid on his neighbour, the victim, from a height on a village road, causing extensive acid burns to the victim's forehead, scalp, neck, chest, buttock and thigh, after which the victim was hospitalised for more than 50 days. The trial court convicted the appellant under Section 326 IPC (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by a corrosive substance) and sentenced him to one year's simple imprisonment with a fine; this was upheld by the Sessions Court and later by the Kerala High Court in revision, leading to this appeal, in which the Supreme Court also issued notice on its own to examine whether the sentence deserved to be enhanced.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court upheld the conviction, rejecting the appellant's argument that the victim had not specifically testified to being in "severe bodily pain for 20 days" or to having suffered disfigurement: the Court held that extensive acid burns requiring over 50 days of hospitalisation obviously satisfied the "grievous hurt" criteria under Section 320 IPC (both the disfigurement and the 20-days'-severe-pain clauses), regardless of the treating doctor's incidental remark that the victim could manage some daily activities during treatment. The Court noted that acid-attack offences are now punished far more severely under Sections 326A/326B IPC (introduced in 2013), and that the one-year sentence here appeared inadequate for the gravity of the crime, but, given the offence occurred in 1997 and the appellant was now 63 years old, the Court chose to refrain from enhancing the sentence, leaving it undisturbed, and dismissed the appeal.

Lesson Learnt

Courts will not let a technical gap in a victim's exact words (e.g., not using the phrase "severe bodily pain") defeat a grievous-hurt conviction when the medical evidence and extended hospitalisation obviously support it, but even where a sentence appears too lenient for a serious crime, courts may decline to enhance it decades later, factoring in the time elapsed and the convict's current age.

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

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