[Section 34 IPC] Once common intention to kill established, immaterial that all accused did not cause injury to accused: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Wednesday observed that in a murder case, once it is established and proved that all the accused gathered at the crime scene with a shared intention to kill, it is immaterial that some of them had not used any weapon to injure the victim [State of Madhya Pradesh v. Ramji Lal Sharma and Another]..A Division Bench of Justices MR Shah and BV Nagarathna noted that the eye-witness accounts of the accused in the present case bringing an axe to kill the victim cannot be discounted by the fact that there were no injury marks from the same on the deceased. " ... once it has been established and proved by the prosecution that all the accused came at the place of incident with a common intention to kill the deceased and as such, they shared the common intention, in that case it is immaterial whether any of the accused who shared the common intention had used any weapon or not and/or any of them caused any injury on the deceased or not."The presence of all the accused at the place of the incident to kill the deceased had been established and they were rightfully convicted by the trial court, the Supreme Court ruled.The Bench was hearing an appeal moved by the State of Madhya Pradesh assailing an order of the Madhya Pradesh High Court that had reversed the murder conviction of two of the four accused..The trial court had held all the accused guilty under Section 302 (murder) read with Section 34 (criminal acts done by several with common intention) of the Indian Penal Code, for killing one Munshilal, and sentenced them to life imprisonment.Aggrieved, the convicted moved an appeal before the High Court.The High Court had allowed appeals preferred by two of the accused by giving them the benefit of doubt, and by observing that there is a contradiction in the ocular (eye) and the medical evidence and therefore, the presence of the accused was doubtful.This was due to the fact that while prosecution witnesses had mentioned the accused wielding an axe and moving towards attacking the victim with it but there was no medical evidence of injuries caused by the same. The State then preferred the present appeal before the Supreme Court..The Supreme Court at the outset observed that the High Court had erred in coming to a conclusion that there is a contradiction in evidence since from the very beginning, that is the filing of the first information report (FIR), the names of all the accused were disclosed..The top court noted that the High Court had not at all considered the vital aspect of the trial court order as to specific findings on the common intention shared by all the accused (including the respondents) to kill the deceased."Presence of all the accused have been established and proved and the prosecution has also been successful in proving that all the accused including accused No.1 and 3 shared the common intention. Therefore, as such the learned trial court rightly convicted all the accused including accused No.1 and 3 for the offences punishable under Section 302 read with Section 34 of the IPC," the top court said.The present appeal was thus allowed and the decision of the trial court was restored by setting aside the High Court's decision..Advocate-on-Record Gopal Jha with advocates Nishant Verma and Shreyash Bhardwaj appeared for the appellant..[Read Judgment]