Welfare of the people is the primary duty of a state, and offence against the public tranquillity are made punishable under the Indian Penal Code, 1860. Offences against public   tranquillity are offences against the state and not against an individual. Chapter 8 of IPC delas with offences against public tranquillity. The scope of chapter 8 covers all the offences that includes group offences. They are done to disrupt peace in a society. Section 141 and 144 of the Act deals with unlawful assembly and joining unlawful assembly armed with deadly weapon respectively.

Unlawful Assembly

 Unlawful Assembly is a gathering of person for the purpose of committing an unlawful act in pursuance to disturb the peace and order in a state. The number of people in the gathering must be 5 or more. Along with that common intention of people to do something that is unlawful is the key ingredient of unlawful assembly. Section 141 of the Indian Penal Code specifies define Unlawful assembly. There are certain essentials to constitute an unlawful assembly that are:

• There must be 5 or more members
• They all must have a common object or common intention to commit an unlawful act
• The common intention must be to commit one of the illegal acts specified under section 141 of IPC.

All the people that are involved in committing the act which is illegal are considered member of unlawful assembly. In an important judgement made in case Bikau Pandey and othrs v. State of Bihar, it was held by the court that a person is said to be a part of unlawful assembly, when he/she knows the assembly is formed for an unlawful purpose and still he/she joins the assembly and is likely to commit any act which specified under Section 144 of IPC, 1860.

Section 144- Joining Unlawful Assembly armed with deadly weapon:

Section 144 of IPC deals with joining unlawful assembly armed with deadly weapon, basically it states that whosoever joins an unlawful assembly and is armed with any deadly weapon or armed with anything that can be used as a weapon of offence and is likely to cause death of any person will be punished with imprisonment for a term of two years or with fine or both. The mail ingredients of Section 144 are:

• The assembly formed by those people must be an unlawful assembly
• The member of the unlawful assembly should have a common intention
• The people of the unlawful assembly muse be armed with a deadly weapon and that   weapon is likely to cause death of anyone
• The accused person should be a member of unlawful assembly.

The offence given under Section 144 is a cognizable offence and non-compoundable offence. But bail can be granted in the case under this Section. It is very important any action to be charged as an offence under Section 144 that they have a common intention of doing that unlawful act and the members were armed with deadly weapon.

It was seen in the case of Satyadeo Singh and others v. The State of Bihar, that the accused persons were part of an unlawful assembly and were also armed with bhala and lathi which are deadly weapon in this case and all those people had a common intention to do a mischief. So, the common object could be seen by the lathis they were carrying. So common object and armed with deadly weapons are considered important to constitute a crime under Section 144.

Aishwarya Says:

I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.

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