The Hindu : National : Single injury can be seen as motive for murder: court

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Friday, Dec 07, 2007
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Single injury can be seen as motive for murder: court

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has held that infliction of a single injury by itself can be construed as a motive for murder.

A Bench consisting of Justices S.B. Sinha and H.S. Bedi said that the absence of any knowledge that the single injury was likely to cause death would become immaterial.

If the intention to cause the bodily injury was proved, the rest of the enquiry would be purely objective and the only question was whether as a matter of purely objective inference, the injury was sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death.

Not a factor

The Bench said: “Infliction of a single injury by itself is not a relevant factor to hold that the assailant had no intention to cause murder of the deceased. What is important is to consider the entire circumstances to arrive at one conclusion or the other. When a group of people come with an intention to assault a particular person with dangerous weapons, the same would attract the principles laid down by the apex court for causing murder.”

Life imprisonment

In the instant case, Murugan, involved in a murder case, was awarded life imprisonment by the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court and three other accused were sentenced to one-year imprisonment.

The present appeal by Murugan and others is directed against this judgment.

On behalf of Murugan it was contended that the appellant had inflicted only one blow with a knife on the deceased Nagarajan and the offence, if any, committed by him would fall under 304 II Indian Penal Code (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and not Section 302 IPC (murder).

Simple injuries

The other accused contended that as they had caused only simple injuries one-year imprisonment was high.

Dismissing the appeal, the Bench confirmed the High Court judgment.

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