Written by Astha Priya1
This article presents case summary on recent Supreme Court judgment where it clarifies on Transmigration of Motive.
Table of Contents
Case Title
Ashok Saxena v. The State of Uttarakhand and Etc., 2025 INSC 148
Bench
JB Pardiwala J. and R. Mahadevan J.
Decided on: 30th January 2025
Brief facts
The appeal arises from a judgment of the Uttarakhand High Court, where the said Court set aside an order of Trial Court acquitting the accused persons (Ashok Saxena and Yashpal Singh). The case arises from an unfortunate incident where the accused persons trespassed into the house of the first informant with the intention to lay assault on him, but ended up inflicting knife blow in the abdomen of the wife of the informant (deceased), when she tried to intervene.
Ultimately, the wife of the informant died. Therefore, an F.I.R. was lodged against the accused persons. However, the Trial Court acquitted the accused persons giving the benefit of doubt. As a result, appeal was filed in the Uttarakhand High Court against the order of the Trial Court, where the order of Trial Court was set aside and accused persons were held guilty. Ashok Saxena was held guilty under Section 302 of Indian Penal Code and Yashpal Singh was held guilty under Section 302 read with Section 34 of IPC.
Provisions involved
- Section 34 IPC (corresponding to Section 3(5) Bhartiya Nagarik Sanhita) – deals with common intention (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention).
- Section 300 IPC (corresponding to Section 101 BNS) – Definition of murder.
- Exception 4 to Section 300, IPC (corresponding to Exception 4 to Section 101 BNS)- It provides that culpable homicide is not murder when committed in a sudden fight, without any premeditation, in a heat of passion upon a sudden quarrel and without the offender’s having taken undue advantage or acted in a cruel or unusual manner.
- Section 301 IPC (corresponding to Section 102 BNS) – deals with culpable homicide by causing death of person other than whose death were intended.
- Section 302 IPC (corresponding to Section 103, BNS) – deals with punishment for murder.
- Section 304 (corresponding to Section 105 BNS) – Punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
Issue
The main issue before the Apex Court was that:
Whether the High Court has committed any error in holding the appellant guilty of the offence of murder under Section 302, IPC?
The Court also went on to analyze legal principles pertaining to the principle of transmigration of motive (or principle of transfer of malice) embodied under Section 301 of IPC.
Arguments on behalf of Appellant
The arguments put forth on the behalf of Appellant were as follows:
- The High Court should not have disturbed the acquittal of the appellant by the Trial Court. The Judgment of the Trial Court was based on reasoned appreciation of oral and documentary evidences and it should not have been set aside except for being absolutely perverse or contrary to evidence on record.
- Further, the appellant contended that the case is one of culpable homicide (Section 304, IPC) rather than murder (Section 302, IPC). Again, the appellant went on to argue that the case not even falls within ambit of ‘culpable homicide not amounting to murder’ as the appellant only intended to harm the informant and not the deceased. Therefore, only knowledge can be attributed.
- It was further argued that conviction should be under Section 304, Part I and benefit of Exception 4 of Section 300, IPC should be given to the appellant.
Arguments on behalf of Respondent
The Respondent vehemently opposed the arguments placed by the appellant and contended that the case falls within the ambit of ‘murder’ (Section 302) and no benefit of any of the exceptions to Section 300 should be given to the appellant.
Judgment
The Court also observed that doctrine of transmigration of motive or transfer of malice is applicable in the present case and accused would be guilty under Section 302 IPC. However, the Court partially allowed the Appeal and altered the conviction of the appellant from Section 302 to Section 304, Part I. The Court, taking into account the genesis of the occurrence provided the benefit of Exception 4 to Section 300 IPC to the accused.
Reasons
In light of the arguments raised by the appellant that the case does not falls within Section 302 IPC, the Court examined the principle of transmigration of motive (or transfer of malice) as embodied under Section 301 IPC. Section 301 IPC reads as follows:
“301. Culpable homicide by causing death of person other than person whose death was intended.— If a person, by doing anything which he intends or knows to be likely to cause death, commits culpable homicide by causing the death of any person, whose death he neither intends nor knows himself to be likely to cause, the culpable homicide committed by the offender is of the description of which it would have been if he had caused the death of the person whose death he intended or knew himself to be likely to cause.”
The Court further illustrates the principle of transmigration of malice: “If A intends to kill B, but kills C whose death he neither intends nor knows himself to be likely to cause, the intention to kill C is by law attributed to him. If A aims his shot at B, but it misses B either because B moves out of the range of the shot or because the shot misses the mark and hits some other person C, whether within sight or out of sight, under Section 301, A is deemed to have hit C with the intention to kill him.”
Therefore, in order to invoke Section 301, it is not required that the accused person intends to cause death or has knowledge that he is likely to cause death of the actual victim. If the death of actual victim is caused in course of the action of the accused to cause death of the intended victim, the same intention or knowledge is to be imputed to the accused, even if the accused has no such intention or knowledge towards the actual victim.
The Court also referred to various judicial decisions to clarify the position of the principle embodied under Article 301: Gyanendra Kumar v. State of U.P.[1], Hari Shankar Sharma v. State of Mysore[2], Jagpal Singh v. State of Punjab[3] and Abdul Ise Suleman v. State of Gujarat[4].
To read more case law summaries click here.
Edited and Published by Jeet Sinha.
[1] Gyanendra Kumar v. State of U.P, AIR 1972 SC 502.
[2] Hari Shankar Sharma v. State of Mysore, 1979 UJ 659 (SC).
[3] Jagpal Singh v. State of Punjab, AIR 1991 SC 982.
[4] Abdul Ise Suleman v. State of Gujarat, 1995 CrLJ 464.
- Astha Priya, 1st Year LLM, South Asian University, New Delhi ↩︎
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