This article has been written by Adv. Aniket P. Kamtam, a 2nd Year MBA-LAW Student from SVKM’s NMIMS SBM College, Vile Parle West.
As per Black’s Law Dictionary Perpetrator means a person who commits a crime or offense.
Before moving to the exact meaning and sense of perpetrator lets know what is perpetration the verb form of perpetrator.
As per P. Ramanatha Aiyar’s Concise Law Dictionary, Perpetration: Means the act of one committing a crime either with his own hands, or by some means or instruments or through some innocent agent.
That means a perpetrator can be any one who can be himself involved in the act of Crime by his presence at the place of crime or can be remotely controlling, managing the perpetual occurrence of act of crime.
The difference between Perpetrator and accused is that a perpetrator is a person who has committed a crime and he is still not been accused formally under any law, there is no name of the person grafted or engraved on any report by the state. A person can even be called as perpetrator if his name is known to the society at large but still no report mentions the substantivity of the person in the report for his act.
Briefly specking there are Three Nomenclature for the person’s associated/involved/participated in the act of crime.
- Accused: As per P. Ramanatha Aiyar’s Concise Law Dictionary, Accused means: A person against whom an allegation has been made that he has committed an offence, or who is charged with an offence. One who is charged with a crime. The term “accused,” in Criminal Procedure Code means a ‘person over whom a Magistrate or other “Criminal” Court is exercising jurisdiction’. The protection of Article 20(3) becomes available to a person as soon as he is named as an accused either in a first information report made under section 154, CrPC 1973 (2 of 1974) or in a complaint instituted against him in Court Subedar v. State, AIR 1957 All 396, 398. [Constitution of India, Art. 20 (3)]
- Culprit: as per Black’s Law Dictionary 1. A person accused or charged with the commission of a crime. 2. A person who is guilty of a crime. Culprit may be a running together of cul, shortened from the Latin culpabilis (“guilty”), and prit, from Old French prest (“ready”), two words formerly used to orally plead at the outset of a criminal case. A criminal; one in fault; a person accused but not yet tried.
- Perpetrator: Concluding……
Now we can say that the perpetrator are those who have committed the crime and who have been accused thereafter and then tried, lastly they are convicted. Perpetrator means the individual who actually participated in the criminally injurious conduct.
The word Perpetrator is open and vide to interpret but is can be defined in saying of the persons act. We can say that every accused and culprit is the perpetrator but every perpetrator is not the accused or Culprit unless found guilty or tried by the authority. Hence perpetrator is the person who is tried and convicted, before that they are just actors of crime but not accused on the reports of state.
A word perpetrator is very general in terms of excluding legal interpretation. The specific word for perpetrator in the law is the culprits. A perpetrator proved guilty is turned as culprit in eyes of law. But even when the person is going on through his term of punishment we call him perpetrator or culprit. The most common differentiating factor between Culprit and Perpetrator is that perpetrator may or may not be acting with intention to commit a crime but a culprit is always acting with the intent to do crime.
Jurisprudence is more concerned about the culprits and not perpetrator, but the society at large is concerned at tackling to pull out the perpetrator out from the society. Civics want perpetrator to be punished and jurisprudence wants culprits to be punished. Culprits are tried in the judicial manner by prosecutors, Perpetrators are tried by the society by law in its hand.
You can find the perpetrators found guilt without trial by the judiciary, like those countries which are governed by dictators or by monarch as sovereign. Culprits are tried by the Judiciary the charges are framed and proved by the state, law punishes them, like those countries which are governed by the Parliament were law is the ruler and sovereignty lies in constitution (Grand norm).