This article has been written by Ms. Naina Singh, a 2nd year Law Student at Amity University Punjab.

ABSTRACT

Mens rea is a legal term that generally refers to the guilty mental state, the lack of which negates the crime situation on any given occasion. It’s one of the most important aspects of criminal liability. Only when an act is done intentionally that is prohibited by law is it considered a criminal offense. In the following article, we will discuss it in detail.

 

WHAT IS MENS REA?

To be found guilty of a crime, the prosecution must prove that there was a physical action, actus reus, and a state of mind to commit a crime, known as mens rea. Mens rea is concerned with what the defendant was thinking at the time he committed the actus reus. Different crimes have different mens rea requirements.

Furthermore, certain offenses under the Indian penal code are defined without regard to mens rea or purpose, such as crimes against the state, counterfeiting coinage, and so on.

 

In India, mens rea as a condition of penal liability works to such an extent that it is codified in the General Exceptions (Sections 76 to 106) of the penal code, which stipulates all those conditions in which mens rea appears to have been subordinated, and therefore no culpability.

 

TYPES OF MENS REA: 

• PURPOSE/ INTENT

 

The term ‘intention’ is a difficult one to define. The Penal Code does not define it. It is a well-known term that, at the same time, resists clear definition. It can refer to the object, purpose, ultimate goal, or design of action in numerous ways. The intention is the deliberate use of a person’s mental powers to do an action to achieve or satisfy a goal. As a result, the intention is frequently employed in relation to the outcomes of an act rather than the act itself. If he wants a consequence to follow from his conduct, he must state it explicitly.

 

The words ‘intention,’ ‘intentionally,’ or ‘with intent to’ are not usually used in law to represent the concept of ‘intention.’ Words like ‘voluntarily’, ‘willfully’, ‘deliberately’, ‘deliberate intention’, ‘with the purpose of’, or ‘knowingly’ is also used to represent it. All of these numerous expressions can be found in the IPC’s various Sections.

 

‘Voluntarily’ is defined under Section 39 of the 1860 Act as follows: 

Section 39: Voluntarily — when a person causes an effect “voluntarily,” he does so by using methods that he meant to use, or by using means that he knew or had reason to believe were likely to cause it at the time he used them.

 

Section 298 of IPC

By Section 298, the terms “deliberate intention” and “premeditated intention” refer to premeditated intentions to damage religious feelings. However, on a first understanding of the text, the terms ‘deliberate’ and ‘intent’ appear to be interchangeable.

 

Sections 285, 286, and 287 states deliberately or negligently omitting to take reasonable care so as not to cause harm to human life in respect of possession of poisonous substances, fire, inflammable matter, and explosive substances, is an offense.

 

The defendants in Niranjan Singh v Jitendra Bhimraj (1990), sought to eliminate two people named Raju and Keshav in order to acquire control of the underworld. They were accused of committing a terrorist offense in violation of TADA. In this case, the Supreme Court determined that the intention was evident based on the facts. However, it cannot be argued that their purpose was to terrorize the general public or a subset of the general public. As a result, it acquitted the accused in the lack of an intention to cause terror, even though the outcome of their act was to cause terror.

 

1. KNOWLEDGE

 

The term ‘knowledge’ refers to a person’s awareness of his or her own thinking. When there is a direct appeal to a person’s senses, he can be assumed to know.  The awareness of the act’s repercussions is known as knowledge. It is a person’s state of mind towards existent facts that he has personally observed or whose existence has been transmitted to him by others whose veracity he has no cause to dispute. The essence of knowledge is that it is subjective. In many circumstances, though, intention and knowledge blur together and imply the same thing, and intention can be inferred from knowledge. Although the border between knowledge and intention is blurry, it is clear that they mean distinct things. Knowledge, in contrast to intention, denotes a state of mental realization in which the mind is a passive recipient of certain ideas or impressions that arise in it, whereas intention denotes a conscious state of mind in which mental faculties are summoned into action to achieve predetermined, predetermined outcomes. Obviously, knowledge is predicated on a thorough understanding of the facts and situations, as well as the consequences of one’s actions.

 

A person was prosecuted in Ranjit D Udeshi v State of Maharashtra (1964) for selling a popular novel by DH Lawrence called Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The accused claimed that he had no knowledge of the book’s contents and hence lacked the essential mens rea. The Court dismissed this argument, holding that because Section 292 of the Code, unlike numerous other provisions, does not include the words ‘knowingly,’ knowledge of obscenity is not an essential element of the crime under Section 292 of the Code.

 

1. RECKLESSNESS

Recklessness is regarded as a person’s state of mind in which he foresees the prospective repercussions of his actions but does not intend or seek to bring them about. A guy is said to be reckless when it comes to the consequences of his actions if he foresees the possibility of them happening but neither desires nor expects them to happen. It’s possible that the perpetrator is unconcerned about the consequences, or that he doesn’t care. In all of these circumstances, the offender is considered to be unconcerned about the consequences of his or her actions. 

 

To put it another way, recklessness is a mental attitude of disregard for the apparent risk.   Driving at a high speed through a congested and small street is dangerous. The guy realizes that his actions may damage someone in the crowd, but is indifferent to this. Similarly, if A throws a stone over a crowd without regard for whether it will damage anyone and the stone lands on the head of one of the people in the crowd, A is guilty of recklessly causing injury.

 

The respondent was driving a car with a customer in the front seat in R v Reid (1978). While remaining in the nearside lane, he tried to pass another vehicle. The rest stop for taxi drivers protruded six feet onto the nearside lane. The defendant was found guilty of causing death through reckless driving, in violation of Section 1 of the Road Traffic Act 1972. The risk must be clear to a reasonably sensible person; however, the defendant does not have to be aware of it.

 

1. NEGLIGENCE

Negligence is a legal term that refers to a lack of care and caution that a rational person would have done in the given circumstances. Negligence is defined as failing to do something that a prudent and reasonable person would do or doing something that a prudent and reasonable person would not do based on the considerations that normally govern the conduct of human affairs. It is a man’s state of mind when he pursues a path of action without considering the repercussions. 

 

A is liable for injuring a passer-by if, during a fight with his wife, A takes up a paperweight from the table and throws it out the window, shattering the passer-skull.  A had neither predicted nor contemplated injury to anyone when he threw the paperweight, yet he is liable since he failed to do so.

 

Despite the fact that the court acknowledged that the defendant was exercising all the skill and attention to be anticipated from a person with his limited experience, he was found guilty of driving without due care and attention in McCrone v Riding (1938) as he had failed to meet the necessary standard.

 

In contrast to torts, negligence is not the basis of liability in general in crimes. Only in a few instances does the IPC, of 1860 establish criminal liability based on negligence. For example, a man is accountable for negligence if his actions endanger the lives of others, such as in the case of rash and negligent driving, rash vessel navigation, negligent conveyance of individuals by water for hire in an unsafe or overloaded vessel, and so on. It’s important to distinguish between negligence and neglect. Neglect, unlike negligence, does not imply a particular state of mind, but rather describes a fact that could be the outcome of either a deliberate or negligent act. A man who knows his scooter’s brake is broken fails to repair it and crashes into a youngster on the road. The injury to the child is caused by his intentional neglect or recklessness in failing to repair the brake, rather than his negligence.

 

THE INSTANCES WHERE MENS REUS IS NOT CONSIDERED

In modern times, a large number of criminal offenses have been developed in which no indication of intent or other mental condition is required. The absence of mens rea has traditionally been associated with a few crimes, such as statutory rape, in which knowledge that the victim is under the age of consent is not required for liability, and bigamy, in which the parties believe they are free to marry in good faith. A number of regulations regulating economic or other actions usually known as public welfare offenses with low fines do not need mens rea to be demonstrated.

 

STRICT LIABILITY

A number of offenses are considered under strict liability, even if they are committed without the presence of a guilty mind. Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea has a couple of exceptions.

 

• Criminal libel
• Public nuisance (Hicklin Test) 
• Contempt of court 
• Abduction/Kidnapping 
• Bigamy 
• Waging war
• Sexual harassment
• Rape
• Selling of obscene books
• Essential Commodities Act, 1955
• Motor Vehicles Act,1988

The Supreme Court distinguished between taking and allowing a minor in the case of S.Varadrajan v. State of Madras (1964). According to the Court, just having a role in assisting the girl’s fulfillment of her objective does not constitute taking. That component falls short of inducing the minor to flee her authorized guardian’s custody and, as a result, is not equal to taking.

 

The two terms are not interchangeable. There are distinctions between the two. In this case, the accused did not remove her from the custody of her legal guardian. In a case such as this, the accused individual must establish some kind of incentive or active participation in the creation of the minor’s intention to leave the guardian’s house. She willingly accompanied him, and the law did not place any obligation on him to return her to her father’s house or even to tell her not to. There was no taking in this case. S. Varadrajan was found not guilty.

 

CONCLUSION

Crime and punishment are intrinsically tied. In accordance with the criminal law system, mens rea is a crucial component. As a result, unless clearly stated otherwise with just reasons, mens rea becomes the sine qua non for all cases. By the presumption, every individual is presumed to intend the natural consequences of his act. Furthermore, taking into account relevant judgments, and the legislative framework, it is not possible to say that mens rea is not an essential element in statutory offenses. The Supreme Court has stated numerous times that it is not obligated to adopt an English court’s decision, but rather is free to develop a law that is appropriate for Indian conditions.

 

“There can be no crime large or small, without an evil mind. It is, therefore, a principle of our legal system, as probably it is of every other, that the essence of an offense is the wrongful intent, without which it cannot exist.” – Bishop

 

REFERENCES

• https://blog.ipleaders.in/all-you-need-to-know-about-mens-rea/#Introduction
• https://lawshelf.com/shortvideoscontentview/mens-rea-the-criminal-state-of-mind