# Bengal Nagpur Cotton Mills v. Board of Revenue, Madhya Pradesh & Others

- **Citation:** [1964] 4 S.C.R. 199
- **Court:** Supreme Court of India
- **Decided:** 1961-09-20
- **Case number:** Criminal Appeal No. 3 of 1962
- **Bench:** B. P. Sinha, J. c. SHAH, N. Rajagopala Ayyangar
- **Source:** https://unisonlegal.in/judgment/supreme-court-of-india/bengal-nagpur-cotton-mills-v-board-of-revenue-madhya-pradesh-others-3033
- **Pages:** 5

## Headnote

Criminal trial-Trespasser-Duty of owners towards trespassers Indian Penal Code S. 99, 103, 304A.
The appellant was
charged under
s. 304-A of Indian
Penal Code for causing the death of a woman. The deceased was
residing near the house of the accused.
The wall of the latrine
of the house of the deceased had fallen down about a week prior
to the day of occurrence and so the
deceased along with others
started using the latrine of the accused.
The accused protested
a~ainst their coming there.
The oral warnings however, proved
ineffective and so he fixed up a naked copper wire across the
passage leading upto his latrine and that wire carried current from
the electrical wiring of his home to which it was connected.
On
the day of the occurrence, the deceased went to the latrine of the
appellant and there she touched the aforesaid fixed wire as a result
o~ which she died soon after. The trial and the appellate court
convicted and sentenced the appellant under S. 304A of the Indian
Penal Code. Hence this appeal.
1963
Bengal Nagpur
Cotton Mills
v.
Board of
Revenue,
Madhya Pradesh
& Others
H idayatullah f.
1963
fuly, 31
1963
Cherubin
Gregory
v.
The State
of Bihar
Ayyangar /.
200
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
l1964J
Held: (!) The plea of the right of private defence of property
was not sustainable for the reason that the type of injury caused
by the trap laid by the accused could not be brought within the
purview of S. 99 or 103 of the Indian Penal Code.
(2) A trespasser was not an outlaw, a caput z.,pinem. The
mere fact that the person entering a land was a trespasser did
not entitle the owner or occupier to inflict on him personal injury
by direct violence and the san1e principle would govern the
in~
fliction of injury by indirectly doing something on the land the
effect of \vhich he must know was likely to cause. serious injury
to the trespasser.

## Text

-
4 S.C.R.
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
199
company was also subject and which was no longer affected
by the will of the quondam sovereign. The agreement of
the Ruler bound the Municipal Committee only indirectly,
because the Ruler to whom the amount recovered would
have gone, had agreed to forego it, but the Ruler's desire
that octroi should not be collected ceased to operate from
the moment he ceased to be the Ruler.
The Resolution of the Municipal Committee was thus
in order and the demand was rightly made. The point
about limitation was properly abandoned because it has no
substance.
The appeal fails and is dismissed with costs.
Appeal dismissed.
CHERUBIN GREGORY
t!.
THE STA TE OF BIHAR
(B. P. SINHA, C.J., J. c. SHAH AND N. RAJAGOPALA
AYYANGAR JJ.)
Criminal trial-Trespasser-Duty of owners towards trespassers Indian Penal Code S. 99, 103, 304A.
The appellant was
charged under
s. 304-A of Indian
Penal Code for causing the death of a woman. The deceased was
residing near the house of the accused.
The wall of the latrine
of the house of the deceased had fallen down about a week prior
to the day of occurrence and so the
deceased along with others
started using the latrine of the accused.
The accused protested
a~ainst their coming there.
The oral warnings however, proved
ineffective and so he fixed up a naked copper wire across the
passage leading upto his latrine and that wire carried current from
the electrical wiring of his home to which it was connected.
On
the day of the occurrence, the deceased went to the latrine of the
appellant and there she touched the aforesaid fixed wire as a result
o~ which she died soon after. The trial and the appellate court
convicted and sentenced the appellant under S. 304A of the Indian
Penal Code. Hence this appeal.
1963
Bengal Nagpur
Cotton Mills
v.
Board of
Revenue,
Madhya Pradesh
& Others
H idayatullah f.
1963
fuly, 31
1963
Cherubin
Gregory
v.
The State
of Bihar
Ayyangar /.
200
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
l1964J
Held: (!) The plea of the right of private defence of property
was not sustainable for the reason that the type of injury caused
by the trap laid by the accused could not be brought within the
purview of S. 99 or 103 of the Indian Penal Code.
(2) A trespasser was not an outlaw, a caput z.,pinem. The
mere fact that the person entering a land was a trespasser did
not entitle the owner or occupier to inflict on him personal injury
by direct violence and the san1e principle would govern the
in~
fliction of injury by indirectly doing something on the land the
effect of \vhich he must know was likely to cause. serious injury
to the trespasser.
CRIMINAL APPELLATE JuRISDICTION: Criminal Appeal
No. 3 of 1962.
Appeal by special leave from the judgment and order
dated September 20, 1961 of the Patna High Court in Criminal Appeal No. 124 of 1960.
D. Goburdhan, for the appellant.
S.P. Verma, for the respondent.
July 31, 1963. The judgment of the Court was <lelivered by
AvYANGAR J.-This is an appeal by special leave against
the judgment of the High Court of Patna dismissing an
appeal by the appellant against his conviction and the sentence passed on him by the Sessions Judge, Champaran.
The appellant was charged with an offence under s.
304A of the Indian Penal Code for causing the death of
one Mst. Madilen by contact with an electrically charged
naked copper wire which he had fixed up at the back of
his house with a view to prevent the entry of intruders
into his latrine. The deceased Madilen was an inmate of
a house near that of the accused. The wall of the latrine
of the house of the deceased had fallen down about a week
prior to the day of the occurrence-July 16, 1959, with
the result that her latrine had become exposed to public
view. Consequently the deceased, among others, st~rted
using the latrine of the accused.
The accused resented this and made it clear to them that they did not
have his permission to use it and protested against t~eir
coming there. The oral warnings, however, proved inef-
-
-
'
4 S.C.R.
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
201
fective and it was for this reason that on the facts, as
found by the courts below, the accused wanted to make
entry into his latrine dangerous to the intruders.
Though some of the facts alleged by the prosecution
were disputed by the accused, they are now concluded by
the findings of the courts below and are no longer open
to challenge and, indeed, learned Counsel for the appellant did not attempt to controvert them. The facts, as
found, arc that in order to prevent the ingress of persons like the deceased into his latrine by making such
mgress dangerous (1) the accused fixed up a copper
wire across the passage leading up to his latrine, (2)
that this wire was naked and uninsulated and carried
current from the electrical wiring of his house to which
it was connected, (3) there was no warning that the wire
was live, (4) the deceased managed to pass into the latrine without contacting the wire but that as she came out
her hand happened to touch it and she got a shock as a.
result of which she died soon after. On these facts the
Courts below held that the accused was guilty of an offence under s. 304A of the Indian Penal Code which enacts :
"304A. Whoever causes the death of any person
by doing any rash or negligent act not amounting to
culpable homicide shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both."
The accused made a suggestion that the deceased had
been sufficiently warned and the facts relied on in this
connection were two : ( 1) that at the time of the accident
it was past day break and there was therefore
enough
light, and (2) that an electric light was burning some distance away. But it is manifest that neither of these could
constitute warning as the conditions of the wire being
charged with electric current could not obviously be detected merely by the place being properly lit.
The voltage of the current passing through the naked
wire being high enough to be lethal, there could be no
dispute that charging it with current of that voltage was
..t
a 'rash act' done in reckless disregard of the serious conse9
quences to people coming in contact with it.
It might be mentioned that t11e accused was also char14-2 S. C. India/64
1963
Cherubin
Gregory
v.
The State
of Bihar
Ayyangar /.
1963
Cherubin
Gregory
v.
The State
of Biha~
Ayyangar /.
202,
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
[1964]
ged before the learned Sessions Judge with an offence
under section 304 of the Indian Penal Code but on the
finding that the accused had no intention to cause the
death of the deceased he was acquitted of that charge.
The principal point of law which appears to have
been argued before the learned Judges of the High Court
was that the accused had a right of private defence of property and that the death was caused in the course of the
exercise of that right. The learned Judges repelled this defence and in our opinion, quite correctly.
The right
of private defence of property which is set out in s.
97 of the Indian Penal Code is, as that section itself
provides, subjeit to the provisions of s. 99 of the Code.
It is obvious that the type of injury caused by the trap
laid by the accused cannot be brought within the scope of
s. 99, nor of course of s. 103 of the Code. As this defence
was not pressed before us with any seriousness it is not
necessary to deal with this at more length.
Learned Counsel, however, tried to adopt a different
approach. The contention was that the deceased was a
trespasser and that there was no duty owed by an occupier
like the accused towards the' trespasser and therefore the
latter would have had no cause of action for damages for
the injury inflicted and that if the act of the accused was
not a tort, it could ·not also be a crime. There is no
substance in this line of argument.
In the first place,
where we have a Code like the Indian Penal Code
which defines with particularity the ingredients of a
crime and the defences open to an accused charged
with any of the offences there set out we consider that
it would not be proper or justifiable to permit the invocation of some Common Law principle outside that Code
for the purpose of, treating what on the words ef the
statute is a crime into a permissible or other than unlawful act. But that apart, learned Counsel is also not right
in his submission that the act of the accused as a result
of which the deceased suffered injuries resulting in her
death was not an actionable wrong. A trespasser is not
. an outlayv, a caput lupinem.
The mere fact that the
person entering a land is a trespasser does not entitle
the owner or occupier to inflict on him personal injury by direct violence and the same principle would
'
-
-
_,
-
4 S.C.R.
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
203
govern the infliction of injury by indirectly doing something on the land the effect of which he must know
was likely to cause serious injury to the trespasser.
Thus in England it has been held that one who sets springguns to shoot at trespassers is guilty of a tort and that
the person injured is entitled to recover.
The laying
of such a trap, and there is little difference between
the spring-gun which was the trap with which the English Courts had to deal and the naked live wire in the present case, is in truth "an arrangement to shoot a man without personally firing a shot". It is, no doubt true that the
trespasser enters the property at his own risk and the occupier owes no duty to take any reasonable care for his
protection, but at the same time the occupier is not entitled to do wilfully acts such as set a trap or set a naked
live wire with the deliberate intention of causing harm to
trespassers or in reckless disregard of the presence of the
trespassers. As we pointed out earlier, the voltage of the
current fed into the wire precludes any contention that it
was merely a reasonable precaution for the protection of
private property. The position as to the obligation of
occupiers towards trespassers has been neatly summarised
by the Law Reform Committee of the United Kingdom in
the following words :
.
"The trespasser enters entirely at his own risk, but
the occupier must not set traps designed to do him
bodily harm or to do any act calculated to do bodily
harm to the trespasser whom he knows to be or
who to his knowledge is likely to be on his premises.
For example, he must not set man-traps or spring guns.
This is no more than ordinary civilised behaviour."
Judged in the light of these tests, it is clear that the
point urged is wholly without merit.
The appeal fails and is dismissed.
Appeal dismissed.
1963
Cherubin
Gregory
v.
The State
of Bihar
Ayyangar J.