INTRODUCTION: CONCEPT OF CRIME

Crime and immorality are related to each other. In ancient groups these crimes emerges out of
the feeling that conduct that offended the immortal threatened the common security. Crime is a
dynamic concept, dependent upon the social development of a people that is upon the
fundamental interests and values dominating their common beliefs.
It is important to consider the question that crime is different from a civil wrong. It is the
common sense approach towards crime, as pointed out by Williams1 that there is something in a
crime that makes it different from a civil wrong. There is one serious issue because it is not the
type of act which can decide whether it is a tort or a crime as the same act can be both tort and
crime. So it is difficult to establish through physical consequences because it has to be same for
same kind of act.
DEFINITIONS OF CRIME

Although providing a specific description of crime is different, many authors have, from time to
time, described the word crime while concentrating on one or the other dimension of a forbidden
act. Crime was identified by William Blackstone in his book, Commentaries on the Laws of
England, “an act committed or omitted in violation of public law forbidding or commanding it.” 2
The word 'public statute', however, has numerous agreed connotations. Austin considered it to be
identical with civil law, although it is equated with positive law or 'municipal law' by certain
other jurists. There are their own merits and demerits of both of these explanations. Maybe
Blackstone provided another meaning by visualizing these inadequacies, “a violation of the
public rights and duties due to the whole community considered as a community.” 3 Sergeant
Stephen, modified this definition to read, “A crime is a violation of a right, considered in
reference to the evil tendency of such violation as regards the community at large.”

Both Blackstone and Stephens have highlighted the loss or harm to the group as a whole. While
this could be relevant with certain offences, not all crimes have an impact on the general
population. “Also, there may be acts that are illegal and cause harm to a large section of

1
Williams, “The Definition of Crime” (1955) Current Legal Problems 107.
2
Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 4, 17th ed, 1830, p. 5.
3
Ibid.

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community, but still are not considered crimes. E.g., the negligent management of a company’s
affairs.”4

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE ELEMENTS OF CRIME

A person cannot usually be held guilty of a criminal offence except two elements are present: an
actus reus, which means a guilty act; and mens rea, which is Latin for guilty mind. Both of these
elements have very specific meaning and they actually refer to more than just moral guilt which
varies according to the crime, but the vital thing to remember is that to be guilty of an offence, an
accused must not only have behaved in a particular way i.e. actus reus, but must also usually
have had a specific mental approach to that behavior i.e. the mens rea. An exception to this law is
a limited number of offences known as crimes of strict liability. The meaning of a specific
offence shall include the actus reus and mens rea required for the offence, either in statute or in
common law. The prosecutor must prove all of these aspects in order to convince the magistrates
or jurors without reasonable doubt of their presence. If this is not done, the defendant will be
acquitted, since all people are considered innocent in English law unless proved guilty.

ACTUS REUS: OBJECTIVE ELEMENT OF CRIME

Actus Reus comprises of all the elements of crime except the mental element i.e. Mens Rea. An
actus reus can consist of more than just an act, which suggests that it contains all of the elements
of the crime rather than the defendant's mens rea. It depends on the offence, which could entail
the situations in which it has been committed and/or the implications of what has been done. For
instance, without their permission, the crime of rape involves illegal sexual contact by a man
with a female. “The loss of consent is an environmental condition that occurs regardless of the
act of the defendant. Similarly, the same act can, depending on its repercussions, constitute part
of the actus reus of multiple crimes. For example, stabbing anyone can constitute the actus reus
of murder if the victim dies, or of causing serious bodily harm (GBH) if the victim survives; the
actions of the accused is the same in both cases, but the effects of it determine whether the actus
reus of murder or GBH was committed.”5

VOLUNTARY CONDUCT
4
Corpus at 16.
5
Catherine Elliott & Frances Quinn, Criminal Law, 9th ed.

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If the defendant is to be found responsible for a crime, his or her actions in perpetrating the actus
reus must be voluntary. Where the defendant has not been in charge of his or her own body
(when there may be a defence of insanity or automatism) or when someone else has very heavy
leverage, such as a warning that the defendant will be killed if he or she does not commit a
certain crime. In such cases the behavior is said to be involuntary.

Some accidents may be viewed by the court as amounting to involuntary conduct that does not
give rise to criminal liability. However, In the case of “R v. Brady, the Court of Appeal
considered the case where a young man had drunk heavily and taken drugs and then sat on a low
railing on a balcony that overlooked a dance floor. He lost his balance and fell, breaking the neck
of a dancer below who was subsequently wheelchair-bound. While the fall was a tragic accident
the Court of Appeal pointed to his earlier voluntary conduct of becoming heavily intoxicated and
sitting precariously on the railing and considered that this voluntary conduct was sufficient to be
treated as having caused the injuries.”6

In a great extent of criticized decision of “R v. Larsonneur, a Frenchwoman was arrested as an

illegal immigrant by the authorities in Ireland and brought back to the UK in custody, where she
was charged with being an alien illegally in the UK and convicted. This is not what most of us
would describe as acting voluntarily, but it apparently fitted the courts’ definition at the time. It
is probably stricter than a decision would be today, but it is important to realize that the courts do
define ‘involuntary’ quite narrowly at times.”7

TYPES OF ACTUS REUS

RESULT CRIMES

There are many examples of result crimes some of which are Manslaughter, Murder, wounding
etc. In this type of crime many authors argue that it is not based on conduct but only on result of
crime.8 “In short the law features only on the result and not on the conduct which causes result.
Therefore actus reus can be defined as the result of such conduct which law seeks to prevent.” 9
But stabbing a person is the actus reus and not the dead person with a knife at his back. The law
6
R v Brady [2006] All ER (D) 239
7
R v Larsonneur [1933].
8
Gordon, 61.
9
Kenny, Outlines, 17.

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is no less interested in the conduct that brings about the result in a ‘result crime’ than in a
‘conduct crime’.10

ACTION CRIMES

In action crimes, the actus reus is merely an act, the effects of which are immaterial. For starters,
if someone makes a declaration that they do not consider to be true when under oath, perjury is
committed. It is not relevant whether the argument makes a difference to the trial or not to if the
crime of perjury has been committed.

CONDUCT CRIMES

A very crude method may be the arrangement of offences into ‘action crimes’ and ‘effect crimes’
and will not always be especially helpful. Rape, for instance, in those words, doesn't even lend
itself to analysis. Nonetheless, the constituent elements of a crime must always be identified, and
the definition will also illustrate important discrepancies between two alternate charges.11

DOCTRINE OF CAUSATION

The doctrine of causation is based on the basic presumption that 'a person may be held
accountable only for the result of his own acts.' The entire doctrine is effectively based on a
single word's interpretation:' result'. A liberal meaning of the term consequence applies not only
to a person's overt actions, but also to acts carried out by innocent officers, such as instances of
coercion, or the use of children or insane persons to commit crime.

“The causation must therefore be a sequence of reasonable anticipated or foreseeable natural

consequence from the first link to the consequence in the form of an unbroken chain. A person
can be held responsible for all the consequences of his act that can be reasonably expected from
the same. This test of ‘reasonable expectation’ is an exclusionary test.” 12 That is, each
consequence has to be ruled out based on the individual circumstances. In a complete chain of
causation, every link is a direct and reasonably expected consequence of the previous link. For
example, A fires a bullet at a very close range with the intention to kill B. The initial act of A i.e.
pulling the trigger is the first link of the chain of causation. As a result of pulling the trigger
10
Lord Diplock in Treacy v DPP [1971] AC 537 at 560.
11
Supra at 15.
12
Jeremy Horder & Andrew Ashworth, Principles of Criminal Law 103 (7th ed. 2013)

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(Link 1), the bullet leaves gun (Link 2) and hits B’s heart (Link 3). The walls of the heart
collapse (Link 4) and B’s heart stops pumping blood to the brain (Link 5) leading to B’s death
(Result). The chain of causation here is complete for it was a natural unbroken sequence. Pulling
the trigger by A was therefore the cause of the final result, actus reus, the death of B.

In “R v. Le Brun, a man punched his wife and she fell down unconscious. While attempting to
lift and drag his wife, she slipped from his grasp leading to a fracture to her skull and subsequent
death. The man was convicted for manslaughter. In this appeal, the court discussed the
remoteness between the initial blow and the resultant death, that is, from the first link to the final
result. Despite the loss of the mens rea to murder his child, the court ruled that the initial
wrongful act was a cause sine qua non for his wife's subsequent demise, and because the
husband's acts were self-serving, the causal chain remained unbroken. The court upheld the
conviction.”13

“A similar Indian case is King Emperor v Sree Narayan & Ors,14 where the accused after a
quarrel with the victim knocks her unconscious. Believing the victim to be dead, he later burns
her “body”, killing the victim.”15

In “Suleman Rahiman Mulani case The accused, who was driving a jeep, hit the deceased,
causing severe injury to him. The defendant put the individual wounded in the jeep for medical
attention, but he died. The guilty cremated the remains afterwards. The accused was indicted
according to S 304A and 201 of the IPC. There must be a causal connection between the death of
a person and the reckless and careless act of the defendant that caused the death of the deceased,
as per s 304AIt was the argument with the defence that the defendant had only a learner's permit
and was thus guilty of inducing the death of the victim. There was no expectation, the court
ruled. The suspect was cleared of the charges.”16

UNEXPECTED INTERVENTIONS
When repairing causation, unintended interventions or twists in the acts that cause the outcome
may produce complications. However if the shame is otherwise apparent, the simple fact that

13
R v Le Brun [1991] 4 All ER 673.
14
King Emperor v Sree Narayan & Ors, AIR 1949 Ori 48.
15
Ibid.
16
1968 AIR 829, 1968 SCR (2) 515.

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there were unexpected treatments or interventions the suspect will not be exonerated from
criminal guilt by turns. But, depending on the facts and circumstances of the situation, it can
have an impact on the degree or magnitude of guilt.
In the famous case of “Joginder Singh v. State of Punjab, The deceased Rupinder Singh teased
the sister of the accused. The two defendants went to Rupinder’s house in revenge and yelled
that they had come to take Rupinder Singh's sister behind. Meanwhile, Rupinder Singh’s cousins
interfered. A hit to the neck was given to one of them by the accused. Rupinder Singh,
meanwhile, began running towards the area. As a result of this, Rupinder Singh jumped into a
well due to which he suffered head injury, the accused began chasing him, leaving him
unconscious and then he died due to drowning. The Supreme Court ruled that when he plunged
into the well, the convict was about 15 to 20 feet from Rupinder SinghThere was no evidence to
prove that the accused pulled Rupinder Singh into the well or that they left him no choice but to
jump into the well. In these circumstances, it was held that the death of Rupinder Singh could not
have been caused by the accused and they were thus entitled to be cleared of the charge of
murder.”17

MENS REA
Mens rea is the 'guilty mind' in Latin and traditionally refers to the state of mind of the person
who committed the crime. Depending on the act, the requisite mens rea differs, but there are two
key states of mind that may constitute the appropriate mens rea of a criminal crime
independently or together: motive and recklessness. We often point to the distinction between
subjective and empirical tests when presenting mens rea. To put simply, a hypothetical
evaluation means looking at what the real defendant believed (or, in practice, what the judge or
jury believes the defendant thought), while an empirical test takes into account what a rational
person may have thought in the place of the defendant. Today, the courts show a clear preference
for subjective mens rea checks.

INTENTION

17
AIR 1979 SC 1876, (1979) Cr LJ 1406(SC).

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Intention is a hypothetical concept: a judge is solely concerned with what the defendant in
question meant at the time of the offence and not with what a reasonable person would have
intended in the same situation.
The definition can be broken into two to better clarify the ethical sense of intent: actual intention
and indirect intention. Where the outcome of an intention is directly intended, it is called direct
aim, where Ann shoots at Ben, for instance, because Ann wishes to kill Ben. However, if a
criminal does not want a result, a jury is still entitled to find motive, so it is a virtually assured
outcome of the crime, and the accused knows this and goes ahead regardless. This is known as
indirect intent. A case may be where Ann throws a rock through a closed window at Ben, aiming
to reach Ben with it on the head. Ann does not consciously try to break the glass, but she knows
that it's going to happen.
Therefore, when Ann throws the rock Ann intends to break the window as well as to hit Ben. It
should be noted that Lord Steyn suggested obiter, in the House of Lords judgment of “R v
Woollin that ‘intention’ did not necessarily have precisely the same meaning in every context in
the criminal law. He suggested that for some offences nothing less than purpose (direct intention)
would be sufficient. He provided a potential example, as in Steane's case, concerning the crime
of aiding the enemy in order to do so. Steane had presented the Nazis with a broadcast to rescue
his family from being deported to death camps. The suspect did not intend to support the Nazis
and was found not guilty of the crime.”18

RECKLESSNESS
Recklessness in common vocabulary involves taking an unjustified chance. In recent years, its
legal meaning has drastically shifted. It is now clear that mens rea is a subjective type, but the
emphasis is on what the defendant felt.
Recklessness can still be viewed as involving a subjective test following the House of Lords
decision of “R v G & Anr, In this case, the House favored the concept of recklessness provided
by the 1989 Draft Criminal Code Bill of the Law Commission, under which an individual
behaves recklessly with regard to the draught Criminal Code Bill–

18
(1999) AC 82.

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(i) A circumstance when he is aware of a risk that it exists or will exist;
(ii) A result when he is aware of a risk that it will occur;”19
And, under the situations known to him, taking the chance is irrational. To fulfil this measure of
recklessness, defendants must still be mindful of the risk. Furthermore, their actions may have
been irrational. Any amount of understanding of a danger would seem to be adequate, provided
the court determines that the risk is excessive. Until the case of R v G & Another,20 the leading
case on subjective recklessness was R v Cunningham,21 the leading case on subjective
recklessness was R v Cunningham. In “R v Cunningham, the defendant broke a gas meter to steal
the money in it, and the gas seeped out into the house next door. Cunningham’s prospective
other-in-law was sleeping there, and became so ill that her life was endangered. Cunningham
was charged under s.23 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 with ‘maliciously
administering a noxious thing so as to endanger life.”22

INTENTION AND MOTIVE

Purpose and motive, as one and the same, are often misunderstood. However, the two are
separate and have to be separated. Normally, the emotional part of a crime does not contain any
connection to intent. A bad intention should not be a justification for a person being convicted.
Likewise, a decent reason may not be an excuse to acquit him. An individual will behave for a
praiseworthy reason, but if his intent causes unjust loss, his crime is complete, regardless of his
motivation.23 Purpose has been defined as the mind's fixed path to a specific object or
determination to behave in a specific way and it can be distinguished from the motivation that
triggers or stimulates behavior.24
Motive may be described in criminal law as what leads or tempts the mind to engage in a
criminal act or as the moving force that motivates the mind to act for a particular result. 25 But the
truth is that the motivation for a crime is trapped in a person's heart, and so it becomes
impossible to tell the same thing. However, failure to report any facts involving intent does not

19
R v G and another, [2003] UKHL 50.
20
Ibid.
21
R v Cunningham, [1957] 2 QB 396.
22
Ibid
23
See Hari Singh Gour, The Penal Law of India, vol 1, 11th edn, Law Publishers, Allahabad, 1998, p 232.
24
S Raghubir Singh Sandhwala v Commr of IT AIR 1958 Punj 250.
25
State of West Bengal v Mohammad Khalid AIR 1995 SC 785.

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undermine a criminal argument, although the presence of the same could improve the case. 26 It is
not wise to say that if no intent is confirmed, no illegal act should be believed. Where positive
evidence is strong, cogent and credible against the perpetrator, the issue of motive becomes
negligible.27
In the case of “Shamsher Singh v. State of Haryana, the Supreme Court affirmed the conviction
of the accused under s 302, IPC, where testimony from eyewitnesses and medical evidence
showed that the death of the deceased was attributed to the injuries inflicted by the accused, even
though there was no direct reason for causing the homicide.” 28 In the case of “Om Prakash v.
State of Uttaranchal, the Supreme Court ruled that failure to show intent is meaningless in a
situation where the guilt of the accused is proven to be irrelevant, rejecting the argument that the
prosecution does not suggest the motive for the killing of three family members.”29

CONCLUSION

26
Meharban v State of Madhya Pradesh (1996) 10 SCC 615.
27
Gurucharan Singh v State AIR 1956 SC 460.
28
(2002) 7 SCC 536.
29
(2003) 1 SCC 648.

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Actus reus and mens rea are the two most basic aspects of crime, and every court will convict an
individual only if the accused mind finds that he commits those actions. If the crime was carried
out without a guilty conscience, so the perpetrator would not be charged. For the prosecution of
an accused, the coincidence of actus reus and mens rea is important.
In order to assess the substantive existence of the crime, the statute declares measures to be used
that if all of the elements of the offence are absent or their involvement and work were not
shown beyond reasonable doubt, the whole trial will fail. Similarly, since the right of the
innocent has to be upheld, the law should not be made rigid.
In common law, unless proved guilty without reasonable doubt, the defendant is presumed
innocent. For a person to be guilty, the Indian courts use both the objective and the subjective
test. Decisions on direct as well as circumstantial evidence are given.
The elements of crime are the perfect way to sentence a criminal when it gives the case and the
accused substantive reality and at the same time allows the law not to make mistakes or misjudge
a person by finding him guilty only at the point of preparation by imprisoning an innocent
person.

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