A, by shooting at a fowl with intent to kill and steal it, kills B, who is behind a bush; A not knowing that he was there. Has A committed the offence of culpable homicide?

Question: A, by shooting at a fowl with intent to kill and steal it, kills B, who is behind a bush; A not knowing that he was there. Has A committed the offence of culpable homicide? [UPCJ, 1997 Bihar (A.P.O.) 1981]

Find the answer to the mains question only on Legal Bites. [A, by shooting at a fowl with intent to kill and steal it, kills B, who is behind a bush; A not knowing that he was there. Has A committed the offense of culpable homicide?]

Answer

Section 299 deals with Culpable Homicide.— Whoever causes death by doing an act with the intention of causing death, or with the intention of causing such bodily injury as is likely to cause death, or with the knowledge, that he is likely by such act to cause death, commits the offense of culpable homicide.

Section defined the concept of culpable homicide as a genus including both kinds of homicides i.e. murder and a homicide not amounting to murder.

The facts of the present case are borrowed from illustration [c] to section 299, IPC. A, by shooting at a fowl with intent to kill and steal it, kills B, who is behind a bush; A not knowing that he was there. Here, although A was doing an unlawful act, he was not guilty of culpable homicide, as he did not intend to kill B or to cause death by doing an act that he knew was likely to cause the death of B.

This case indicated that merely because death is, so to say, accidentally caused in the commission of an unlawful act that itself will not convert the accidental killing into murder. All killing is not necessarily murder. A’s primary motive or intention was to steal and not to murder. If however, A knew that B was behind the bush and intended to kill B had pretended to shoot at the fowl and shot both the fowl and B he would be clearly guilty of murder, his motive being to kill B under the pretext of killing the fowl.

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