Indian Kanoon - Search engine for Indian Law

1. This is an appeal by the Public Prosecutor on behalf of Government against the acquittal of one Suryanarayana Murthi, on a charge of having murder the girl, Rajalakshmi.

2. The facts of the case, so far as it is necessary to state them for the purposes of this appeal, are PS follows:

The accused, with the intention of killing Appala Narasimhulu (on whose life he had effected large insurances without Appala Narasimhulu's knowledge, and in order to obtain the sums for which he was insured), gave him me sweetmeat (hah a) in which a poison containing arsenics and mercury in soluble form had been mixed. Appala Narasimhulu ate a portion of the sweetmeat, and threw the rest away. This occurred at the house of the accused's brother-in law where the accused had asked Appala Narasimhulu to meet him. Rajalakshmi, who was aged 8 or 9 years, and who was niece of the accused, being the daughter of accused's brother-in-law, took some of the sweetmeat, and ate it and gave some to another little child who also ate it. According to one account Rajalakshmi asked the accused for a portion of the sweetmeat, but according to the other account, which we accept as the true account, Appala Narasimhulu, after eating a portion of the sweetmeat, threw away the remainder, and it was then picked up by Rajalakshmi without the knowledge of the accused. The two children who had eaten the poisoned sweetmeat died from the effects of it, but Appala Narasimhulu, though the poison severely affected him, eventually recovered. The accused has been sentenced to transportation for life for having attempted to murder Appala Narasimhnln. The question which we have to consider in this appeal is whether, on the facts stated above the accused is guilty of the murder of Rajalakshmi.

3. I am of opinion that the accused did cause the death of Rajalakshmi and is guilty of her murder. The law on the subject is contained in Sections 299 to 301 of the Indian Penal Code, and the whole question is whether it can properly be said that the accused caused the death of the girl, in tie ordinary tense in which these words should be understood, or whether the accused was so indirectly or remotely connected with her death that he cannot properly be said to have "caused" it. It, is not contended before us that the accused intended to cause the death of the girl, and we may take it, for the purpose of this appeal, that he did not know that is act was even likely to cause her death. But it is clear that he did intend to cause the death of Appala Narssimhulu. In order to effect this he concealed poison in a sweetmeat and gave it to him to eat. It was these acts of the accused which caused the death of the girl, though, no doubt, her own action, in ignorantly picking up and eating the poison, contributed to bring about the result. Section 299 of the Indian Penal Code says: "whoever causes death by doing an act with the intention of causing death, or with the intention of causing such bodily injury as is likely to cause death or with the knowledge that he is likely by such act to cause death commits the offence of culpable homicide." It is to be observed that the Section does not require that the offender should intend to kill (or know himself to be likely to kill) any particular person. It is enough if he "causes the death" of any one by doing an act with the intention of "causing death" to any ere, whether the person intended to be killed or any one else. This is clear from the first illustration to the section, "A. lays sticks and turf over a fit, with the intention of thereby causing death, or with the knowledge that death is likely to be thereby caused. Z., believing the ground to be from, treads on it falls in and is killed. A. has committed the offence of culpable homicide."

5. The language of the Section and the illustration seem to me to show that neither the contributory action of Appala Narasimhulu in thrown g away part of the sweetmeat nor the contributory action of the girl in picking it up and eating it prevent our holding that it was the accused who caused the girl's death. The Indian Law Commissioners in their report (1846) on the Indian Penal Code call attention to the unqualified use of the words to "cause death" in the definition of culpable homicide, and rightly point out that there is a great difference between acts which cause death immediately, and acts which cause death remotely, and they point out that, the difference is a matter to be considered by the Courts when estimating the effect of the evidence in each case. Almost all, perhaps all, results are caused by a combination of causes, jet we ordinarily speak of a result as caused by the most conspicuous or efficient cause, without specifying all the contributory causes. In Webster's Dictionary "cause" is defined as "that which produces or effects a result; that from which anything proceeds and without which it would not exist"', and again "the general idea of cause is that without which another thing, called the effect, cannot be and it, is divided by Aristotle into four kinds known by the name of the moterial, the formol, the efficient and the final cause. The officient cause is the agent, that is, prominent or conspoicuous in producing a change or result."

24. The next point for consideration is whether the death of Rajalakshmi was caused by the accused's act within the meaning of Section 299. The question is really one of fact or of proper inference to be drawn from the facts. The girl's death was caused by eating the sweetmeat in which the accused had mixed poison and which he brought to the house where the girl lived in order to give it to the man for whom it was intended. It was given to him, but he, not relishing the taste of it, threw it down. The deceased girl soon afterwards picked it up and ate it. But the accused was not present when Rajalakshmi ate it, and we may even take it that if the accused had been present, he would have prevented the girl from eating the sweetmeat. These being the facts, there can be, however, no doubt that the act of the accused in mixing arsenic in the halva and giving it to Appla Narasimhulu in Rajalakshmi's house was one cause in the chain of causes which brought about the girl's death. Toe question then is whether this act of the accused was such a cause of Rajalakshmi's death as to justify us in imputing it to such act. In my opinion it was. Obviously, it is not possible to lay down any general test as to what should be regarded in criminal law as the responsible cause of a certain result when that result, as it often happens, is due to a series of causes. We have to consider in each case the relative value and efficiency of the different causes in producing the effect and then to say whether responsibility should be assigned to a particular act or not as the proximate and efficient cause. But it may be observed that it cannot be a sufficient criterion in this connection whether the effect could have been produced in the cape in question without a particular cause, for it is involved in the very idea of a cause that the result could not have been produced without it. Nor would it be correct to lay down generally that the intervention of the act of a voluntary agent must necessarily absolve the person between whose act and result it intervenes. For instance, if A. mixes poison in the food of B. with the intention of killing B. and B. eats the food and is killed thereby, A. would be guilty of murder, even though the eating of the poisoned food, which was the voluntary act of B., intervened between the act of A. and B.'s death. So here the throwing aside of the sweetmeat by Appala Narasimhulu and the picking and the eating of it by Rajalakshimi cannot absolve the accused from responsibly for his act. No doubt, the intervening acts or events may some time be such as to deprive the earlier act of the character of an efficient cause. Now, suppose in this case Appala Narasimhulu had discovered that the sweetmeat was poisoned and then gave it to Rajalakshmi to eat, it is to his act that Rajalakshmi's death would be imputed and not to the accused's. Or, suppose Appala Narasimhulu, either suspecting that the sweetmeat was poisoned or merely thinking that it was-not fit to be eaten, threw it away in some unfrequented place so as to put it out of harm's way and Rajalakshmi happening afterwards to pass that way picked it up and ate it and was killed, the act of the accused in mixing the poison in the sweetmeat could in that case hardly be said to have caused her death within the meaning of Section 299. On the other hand, suppose Appala Narasimhulu finding Rajalakahmi standing near him and without suspecting that there was anything wrong with the sweetmeat gave a portion of it to her and she ate it and was killed, could it be said that the accused who had given the poisoned sweetmeat to Appala Narasimhulu was not responsible for the death of Rajalakshmi? I think not. And there is really no difference between such a case and the present case. The ruling reported in Litter No. 151, dated the 9th February 1879 (sic), also supports the view of the law which I have tried to express.