This article has been written by Miss. Maitri Jain a 5th year B.A.LL. B student of Teerthankar Mahaveer University.

INTRODUCTION:

The Indian penal code, 1860 does not provide a precise definition of crime. A social wrong committed by an individual is called crime. A criminal wrong is different from civil wrong in that it is a significant wrong committed against a person, civil wrong focuses more on offering a solution than on punishing the offender.

Criminal law is a corpus of codified rule that outline action that are unlawful and may have an impact on a person, their property, or society as a whole. Public welfare and safety are threatened by and harmed by crime. Every time a crime is committed on purpose, there is a comprehensive process or series of steps that led up to it.

FOURE STAGES OF CRIME:

Every commission of a crime has following four stages:

1. Intention to commit crime
2. Preparation for its commission
3. Attempt to commit it 
4. Commission of the crime

• INTENTION: 

Mere intention (or contemplation) to commit a crime, not followed by an act, does not constitute an offence. The will is not to be taken for the deed, unless there is some external act, which show that progress has been made in that direction or towards maturing and effecting it. “When a man voluntarily does an act, knowing at the time that, in the natural course of event, a certain result will follow, he intends to bring about that result”.

• PREPARATION: 

Preparation consists in devising means for the commission of an offence. The Indian penal code does not punish acts done in the stage of preparation. Mere preparation is punishable only in some cases under the Indian penal code, as for instance, when the preparation is to wage war against the state (section 122) or to commit dacoity (section 399) or to counterfeit coins and government stamps (sections 233-235).

• ATTEMPT: 

An attempt is the direct movement towards the commission after the preparation are made. To constitute the offence of attempt, there must be an act done with the intention of committing an offence and for the purpose of committing that offence, and it must be done in attempting the commission of the offence. An attempt can only be manifested by acts which would end in the consummation of the offence, but for the intervention of circumstances independent of the will of the party. Thus, an attempt is complete when person intending to pick another’s pocket, thrusts his hand into the pocket, but finds it empty.

Thus, an attempt to commit a crime forms part of a series of acts which constitute the actual commission of that act, if it were noy interrupted for some reason.

The essentials of an attempt, therefore, are:

1. A guilty intention to commit an offence.
2. Some act done towards the commission of the crime.
3. Actual offence not committed.

• COMMISSION:

The last stage in the commission of a crime is that it is successfully committed, and the consequences of the crime materialize.

CONCLUSION:

The judicial system has long recognized and used the four stages of a crime. To determine the degree of guilt for a crime at each level, these stages must be classified. As the cannot ignored legal principle of locus poenitentiae, culpability typically arises during the actual conduct of crime as well as any attempts to commit the crime. The difficulty that courts face most frequently is determining the difference between preparation for a crime and an effort to commit one.