Mahesh Ram vs State Of Chhattisgarh on 25 July, 2022
In the matter of Debashis Daw v. State of West
Bengal3, the Supreme Court, after referring to the
decision in Akhtar Alam v. State of West Bengal 4
observed that the prosecution is required to
establish whether the accused persons were present
and whether they shared a common object. For
resorting to the provisions of Section 149 of IPC,
the prosecution has to establish that: (I) there
was an assembly of five persons; (ii) the assembly
had a common object; and (iii) the said common
object was to consist one or more of the five
illegal objects specified in Section 141 of IPC.
The pivotal question of applicability of Section
149 of IPC has its foundation on constructive
liability which is the sine qua non for its
application. It contained essentially only two
ingredients, namely, (i) offence committed by any
member of any unlawful assembly consisting five or
more members and; (ii) such offence must be
committed in prosecution of the common object
(Section 141 IPC) of the assembly or members of
that assembly knew to be likely to be committed in
prosecution of the common object.