The Latin maxim ‘actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea’—the act does not render one guilty unless the thought is also guilty—expresses the essential concept of the principle of mens rea. Mens rea is the legal term used to describe the element of a criminal offence that relates to the defendant’s mental state. Different crimes have different mentes reae:
1) Intention; · 2) Motive; · 3) Knowledge; · 4) Recklessness; · 5) Negligence
Words denoting mens rea in the IPC
Words like ‘voluntarily’, ‘willfully’, ‘deliberately’, ‘deliberate intention’, ‘with the purpose of’, or ‘knowingly’ are also used to represent intention. All of these numerous expressions can be found in the IPC’s various Sections.
- Voluntarily
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. - Dishonestly
Section 24 says that, “If a person does anything with an intention to cause wrongful gain to one person and wrongful loss to another, acts dishonestly.” Section 24 says that wrongful gain is a gain of property by unlawful means to which the person gaining is not legally entitled. Similarly, wrongful loss means loss by unlawful means of property to which the person losing is legally entitled. Gaining wrongfully means that a person either acquires wrongfully or the rightful owner is wrongfully kept out of any property or is wrongfully deprived of the property. Thus, the word dishonestly has been used in a technical sense, only in relation to property and that too when it causes with wrongful gain or wrongful loss. - Fraudulently
Section 25 says that a person is said to do a thing fraudulently if he does that thing by which he intends to defraud but not otherwise. The word ‘fraud has not been defined in the IPC and it is not easy to define fraud exhaustively so as to include all possible cases of fraud.
- Intention and motive
Intention must be distinguished from motive. (i) Motive is the reason or ground of an action, whereas intention is the volition or active desire to do an act. In other words, intention is an operation of the will directing an overt act; motive is the feeling which prompts the operation of the will—the ulterior object of the person willing.
For instance, if A kills B, the intention is the state of mind which directs the act which causes death, the motive is the object which the person had in view, namely, the satisfaction of some such desire as revenge, vengeance, hatred and the like.
Motive is not a basis for criminal liability. Criminal law takes into account only a man’s intention and not his motive. A good motive will not render lawful what is in fact a crime. If a man steals food in order to feed his starving child, the act amounts to theft, in spite of the fact that the motive for the act was to save the life
Likewise, a bad motive will not make unlawful that which is lawful. An executioner may enjoy putting a convict to death because of spite against him, but this would not render his lawful act a crime. Thus, motive is not a sine qua non (an indispensable requisite or condition) for holding the accused liable. - Knowledge and reason to believe
Knowledge is again distinguishable from “reason to believe”. A person is supposed to know a thing where there is a direct appeal to his senses, whereas “reason to believe” means sufficient cause to believe a thing but not otherwise. If A comes to B at night under suspicious circumstances and offers to sell a valuable watch for Rs. twenty only, B may not know that the watch is stolen, but he has sufficient reason to believe that the watch might be stolen, as is evident from the low price demanded.
Mens rea
The Supreme Court on more than one occasions has reiterated that unless a statute either clearly or by necessary implication rules out mens rea as a constituent part of a crime, a person should not be found guilty of an offence, if he has not a guilty mind.
Thus, in exceptional cases a person may be convicted of an offence independently of any wrongful intent or culpable negligence. Such offences are termed as offences of strict liability or absolute liability. In such a case it is no defence to an accused that he honestly believed on reasonable grounds and in good faith in the existence of facts which would have rendered his conduct innocent.
Crimes of strict liability
Thus, in exceptional cases a person may be convicted of an offence independently of any wrongful intent or culpable negligence. Such offences are termed as offences of strict liability or absolute liability. In such a case it is no defence to an accused that he honestly believed on reasonable grounds and in good faith in the existence of facts which would have rendered his conduct innocent. Cases to which the doctrine of mens rea does not apply may be placed under four categories, viz.:
(i) Statutory offences of abduction, kidnapping, rape and offences against the State and army, etc.;
(ii) Cases of public nuisance, libel and contempt of court, etc.;
(iii) Offences created by statutes that are regulatory in nature, in which although the proceedings are criminal, it is really a mode of enforcing a civil right, for example, cases of violation of municipal laws, town planning laws, and traffic regulations, etc.;
(iv) Public welfare offences which include socio-economic offences relating to food, drugs, weights and measures, hoarding and black marketing, licensing, revenue, environment pollution and custom offences, etc. Such offences are basically quasi-criminal in nature.
