Case – K.M. Nanavati v. State of Maharashtra, 1962
Fact –
K M Nanavati was second in command of the Indian Naval Ship of Mysore. He married Sylvia in 1949 in England. They have three children by the marriage. Prem Bhagwandas Ahuja, a businessman of Bombay, was unmarried and was about 34 years of age.
Sylvia confessed to Nanavati of her illicit intimacy with Prem Ahuja. He drove his wife and children to a cinema where he dropped them promising to pick them up when the show ended. The accused went to his ship, took from its stores a revolver and cartridges on a false pretext,
loaded the same, went to Ahuja’s flat, entered his bedroom and shot him dead. After the shooting the accused went back to his car and drove it to the police station where he surrendered himself.
Issue
Was Nanavati entitled for the benefit of Section 80, IPC?
Whether confession of adultery by the wife of accused to him amounts to grave provocation?
Contentions & Judgement:
- The prosecution had proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the accused had intentionally shot the deceased and killed him. Accused will not get the benefit of Section 80, IPC.
Under exception 1 of Section 300, culpable homicide is not murder if the following conditions are complied with:
- (1) The deceased must have given provocation to the accused.
- (2) The provocation must be grave.
- (3) The provocation must be sudden.
- (4) The offender, by reason of the said provocation, shall have been deprived of his power of self-control.
- (5) He should have killed the deceased during the continuance of the deprivation of the power of self-control.
- (6) The offender must have caused the death of the person who gave the provocation or that of any other person by mistake or accident.
Test of Grave and Sudden Provocation:
- Objective Test -The test of “grave and sudden” provocation is whether a reasonable man, belonging to the same class of society as the accused, placed in the situation in which the accused was placed would be so provoked as to lose his self-control.
- Words and gestures are sufficient – In India, words and gestures may also, under certain circumstances, cause grave and sudden provocation to an accused so as to bring his act within the first Exception to section 300 of the Indian Penal Code.
- The mental background created by the previous act of the victim may be taken into consideration in ascertaining whether the subsequent act caused grave and sudden provocation for committing the offence.
- Blow during influence of passion -The fatal blow should be clearly traced to the influence of passion arising from that provocation and not after the passion had cooled down by lapse of time, or otherwise giving room and scope for premeditation and calculation.
In this case the Supreme Court said, “No abstract standard of reasonableness can be laid down. What a reasonable man will do in certain circumstances depends upon the following:
- customs,
- manners,
- way of life,
- traditional values etc.;
- in short, the cultural, social and emotional background of the society to which an accused belongs.
- It is not necessary in this case to ascertain whether a reasonable man placed in the position of the accused would have lost his self- control momentarily or even temporarily when his wife confessed to him of her illicit intimacy with another, for we are satisfied on the evidence that the accused regained his self-control and killed Ahuja deliberately.
K.M. Nanavati case accused got sufficient time to cool his mind.
- His conduct clearly shows that the murder was a deliberate and calculated one. The mere fact that before the shooting, the accused abused the deceased, and the abuse provoked an equally abusive reply could not conceivably be a provocation for the murder.
- So, he was convicted for murder. He was not given benefit of Exception 1 of Section 300. Murder could not convert into culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
