Case – Thakorlal D. Vadgama v. State of Gujarat, 1973
Fact – Thakorilal D Vadgama, an industrialist, had a factory at Bunder Road for manufacturing oil engines. Mohini was a schoolgirl of immature understanding having entered her 16th year. Vadgama and Mohini developed a relationship, which was found by the parents of Mohini.
Out of emotion she wrote letters to the appellant exaggerating incidents of rebuking by her mother and beating. The appellant had come to know about the frame of her mind disclosed from the letters. With that view he told Mohini to come to his house and added that he would keep her with him permanently. This possibly caught the imagination of the girl, and the result was that she left her father’s house with bare clothes on her body and with schoolbooks and went straight to the appellant.
He kept her in the garage of his bungalow for 2 days, tried to hide her from the police and her parents and had already made attempt to put the police and parents of Mohini on the wrong track. There is no scope for an inference other than the inference that Mohini was kidnapped from lawful guardianship, with an intention to seduce her to illicit inter-course. The intention contemplated by section 366 of the Indian Penal Code is amply borne out by these circumstances.
Issue – Whether Thakorilal D Vadgama would be convicted for the kidnaping even the girl left her parent’s house out of her own accord.
Contentions & Judgement:
- Taking means “to cause to go”, “to escort” or “to get into possession”. Taking means physical taking, but not necessarily by use of force or fraud. It is not confined only to use of force, actual or constructive.
- Enticement can take many forms, difficult to visualise and describe exhaustively; some of them may be quite subtle, depending for their success on the mental state of the person at the time when the inducement is intended to operate. This may work immediately or it may create continuous and gradual but imperceptible impression culminating after some time, in achieving its ultimate purposes of successful inducement.
- If the minor leaves her parental home, influenced by any promise, offer or inducement emanating from the accused party, then the latter will be guilty of an offence as defined in section 361I.P.C. even though enticement was not immediate prior.
- The statutory language suggests that if the minor leaves her parental home completely uninfluenced by any promise, offer or inducement emanating from the accused party, then the latter cannot be considered to have committed the offence as defined in Section 361, I.P.C.
- Appeal was dismissed. It means decision of High Court was upheld. He was convicted under Section 366, IPC.
