Murder of an individual is considered as the highest form of belligerence in a country, which is why “death penalty” correctively serves as the ultimate penance in the form of justice. However, killing of a person may or may not always be intentional or be inherent of mala fide objective. Therefore, the idea is to discern whether it is “murder” or “culpable homicide not amounting to murder”.

People often get confused between ‘culpable homicide’ and ‘murder’. The differences between these two terms are small but important to the legal system while dispensing justice to the victims of these grave crimes. Murder is a crime against a person as well as the society as a whole. In murder there is greater intension or knowledge than in culpable homicide. “Culpable” means criminal and “homicide” means the act of killing other person. Culpable homicide is a categorisation of certain offences, which involves the illegal killing of a person either with or without an intention to kill depending upon how a particular jurisdiction has defined the offence. It means unlawful killing which is not classified as murder due to the guilty intension of a person or ‘mens rea’ being absent. The law defines that culpable homicide is the genus and murder is its species.

Culpable homicide presupposes an intension or knowledge of likelihood, of causing death. In absence of such intention or knowledge even if the death is caused, the offences may be of hurt or grievous hurt.

Culpable homicide is not amounting to murder exception 1 to 5 of section 300 of Indian Penal Code defines conditions which are: provocation, right to private defence, public servant exceeding his power, sudden fight, consent.

The distinction between murder (the gravest offence in law) and culpable homicide not amounting to murder is so fine that it sometimes confounds even the keepers of law. Under the India Penal Code, culpable homicide not amounting to murder is the act of causing death with the intention of causing death or with the intention of causing such bodily injury that is likely to cause death or even with the knowledge that such an act is likely to cause death. Culpable homicide is broadly put into two categories: (a) Acts done with the intention to kill and (b) With a knowledge that it would kill. The first part is graver and punishable under Section 304 (I) with up to ten years jail or life imprisonment. The second attracts only up to ten years jail. Both types of culpable homicide not amounting to murder are considered less grave than murder. Under Section 302 of the IPC, murder is punishable with either life imprisonment or death sentence. For an act to be a murder, the person committing it absolutely needs to have the intention of causing death or causing such injuries that he knows are likely to kill the person on whom they are inflicted even in the ordinary course of nature.

Earlier this year in Indore: A Delhi Public School official was among three persons arrested by police in connection with the death of four students in a road accident, on 5 January 2018 and were charged for culpable homicide. A terrible accident occurred at the Kanadiya bypass when the speeding school bus rammed into a truck on Friday, killing four students and the bus driver, Rahul Sisodia.

The reason suspected behind the accident was a faulty speed governor device installed on the bus.  “Police on Sunday arrested Delhi Public School (DPS) Transport Officer Chaitanya Kumawat, Suvidha Auto Gas director Neeraj Agnihotri and its staffer Jalaj Meshram.” Additional Superintendent of Police, Manoj Kumar Rai said that the trio has been charged under section 304 (punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the IPC over the malfunction of the speed governor installed in the bus.

The incident had occurred when Sisodia lost control over the bus, which broke the divider and entered a parallel lane, before colliding head-on with the truck. Four students, aged between six and 12 years, and the bus driver died in the incident, while nine other students and the driver’s assistant were injured and six of the injured students are in critical condition.

Officials suspect that a serious technical problem in the vehicle’s steering or carelessness on the part of the driver had led to the accident.

The 34-seater bus was issued a fitness certificate on 26 December, 2017 (10 days before the accident) and it was valid till 25 December, 2018.

Case: Udai Singh vs. State 155 (2008) DLT 275: The accused had gone to the house of the deceased at night time by scaling the wall. He was carrying with him a bottle of acid which he threw on the deceased and her daughter. That shows that it was a pre-planned and pre- meditated decision of the accused to go to the house of the deceased with the intention of throwing acid on her to cause injuries on her body which were likely to cause her death. We have already accepted the dying declaration of the deceased, where she had claimed that the accused had been threatening her to kill her and to disfigure her face with acid because of her having refused to live with him as his wife. The deceased died in the hospital battling with life after survived for about two months after the incident despite her having sustained 55% burn injuries. The appellant-accused was charged for culpable homicide not amounting to murder under section 304 of Indian Penal Code undergo rigorous imprisonment for ten years for causing the death of the deceased Aruna and also to pay fine.

Conclusion

The field of Culpable Homicide is very vast and is of practical utility. It includes all felonious homicide not amounting to murder. It is basically a killing which the killer neither intended nor foresaw as likely to happen; it is an accidental, blameworthy felonious killing. The causing of death is common to both the branches, and there is a criminal intension or knowledge in both. The difference does not lie in the quantity; it lies in the quantity in which the criminal act has been disclosed. Thus the correct expression “All murders are culpable homicides but all culpable homicides are not murders.”

 BY Hitakshi Rajput