- Bench: Hon'ble Chief Justice Mr B.P. Sinha; Hon'ble Mr Justice J.C. Shah; Hon'ble M. Justice N. Rajgopala Ayyangar
- Petitioners: Cherubin Gregory
- Respondents: State of Bihar
Facts of the case:
Pursuant to section 304A of the Indian penal code, the appellant was charged with causing the death of a lady MstMadilen for using his later, even though she was not allowed to use it. She behaved as a trespasser, and met this kind of fate. It was 16 July 1959 when the incident took place a week before that, when the wall of the deceased fell down and was revealed to the public. Appellant house was adjacent to the deceased house which resulted in the passerby including the deceased using his latrine frequently. The appellant was not satisfied with all of the consequences and he gave several warnings not to use his laterin without permission but his warning remains futile.At last he tried another way when oral warning had no effect by building a live copper wire trap around his latrine so that no one could reach his premises without his permission. The mounted wire was live and uncoated, making them extremely dangerous adding to it that he did not put up any signs or alerts about the live wire. The deceased entered the latrine like any other day and she managed to go inside but touched the live wire after returning her hand and she got a shock which resulted in her death. Since this incident could only be prevented by a warning sign and such act resulted in gross negligence on the part of the appellant liable under section 304A of the Indian Penal Code.
Judgment:
The case was based on the accused's reckless and careless act while the court took English law comparison, they did not address various important issues so that the distinction could be made between careless act and a well-executed act.As in this case, the installation of live electrical wire merely justified the accused's malice intention, as no reasonable man should disregard the implications of installing such dangerous material so that it wasn't justified to put liability under section 304A.
Hon'ble Supreme Court of India observed as- The appellant was charged with an offence under S. 304A of the Indian Penal Code for causing the death of one Mst. Madilen by contact with an electrically charged naked copper wire which he had fixed up at the back of his house with a view to prevent the entry of intruders into his latrine, an electric light was burning some distance away. But it wasobvious that neither of these could constitute warning as the conditions of the wire being charged with electric current could not obviously be detected merely by the place being properly lit.
The right of private defence of property which is set out in s. 97 of the Indian Penal Code is, as that section itself provides, subject to the provisions of s. 99 of the Code. It was clear that the sort of injury incurred by the accused's trap cannot be placed within the limits of s. 99 and none of course s. 103 By the Mark.The point was that the deceased was a transgressor and there was no obligation owed by a certainoccupier like the accused towards the trespasser and therefore the latter would have had no cause of action for damages for the injury inflicted and that if the act of the accused was not a tort, it could not also be a crime. There was thus no substance in this line of argument. In the first place, where we have a Code like the Indian Penal Code which defines with particularity the ingredients of a crime and the defences open to an accused charged with any of the offences there set out we consider that it would not be proper or justifiable to permit the invocation of some ‘Common Law principle’ outside that Code for the purpose of treating what on the words of the statute is a crime into a permissible or other than unlawful act. But that apart, learned Counsel is also not right in his submission that the act of the accused as a result of which the deceased suffered injuries resulting in her death was not an actionable wrong. A trespasser is not an outlaw, a Caput lupinem. The mere fact that the person entering a land is a trespasser does not entitle the owner or occupier to inflict on him personal in- jury by direct violence and the same principle would 203 govern the infliction of injury by indirectly doing some- thing on the land the effect of which he must know was likely to cause serious injury to the trespasser.
