Slashing of person's scrotum: HC sentences 4 to 5 years imprisonment

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The High Court has sentenced four persons to five years in imprisonment each for slashing the scrotum of a fellow villager holding that it was an offence of ‘voluntarily causing grievous hurt.’

The trial court had acquitted them of the charge of ‘attempt to murder.’ The HC said that while the charge of ‘attempt to murder’ did not qualify in this incident, it was certainly an offence under Section 326 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

“It is not safe to hold that the act of the accused in cutting the scrotum of PW-2 (victim) with a sharp-edged weapon, which is the blade here, would amount to an attempt to commit the murder of PW-2. On the other hand, the act of the accused amounts to voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons and in dangerous means, which is an offence punishable under Section 326 of IPC,” the division bench of Justice HB Prabhakara Sastry and Justice Anil B Katti said in their recent judgement.

The accused, Siddaraju, Shivalinga, Annappa and Prakash are from Ramanagara. In October 2008, they dragged the victim in front of a temple in their village and assaulted him.

The fight was a result of a property dispute in the village. One of the accused held the hands, the other the leg and the third sat on the chest of the victim. The fourth, “using a blade, cut the scrotum of the victim exposing its contents.”

The police charged the four under Section 307 (attempt to murder) and Section 34 (conspiracy) of the IPC. The Trial Court in its judgement on March 1, 2016, acquitted the accused of the offences punishable under Section 307 read with Section 34 of the IPC.

The prosecution challenged this and filed an appeal in the HC which gave its judgement recently. The HC agreed with the Trial Court that the incident was not an attempt to murder.

It said, “Needless to say that, every act of inflicting injury, maybe by using the weapons like blade, by itself would not amount to an act of attempt to murder unless the prosecution establishes that had the accused been successful in their act, the injured would have been died and the act of the accused would have been a murder.”

However, the HC said, “On the other hand, the act of the accused amounts to voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons and in dangerous means, which is an offence punishable under Section 326 of IPC.”

Sentencing the four to five years imprisonment and fine of Rs.15,000 each, the HC said, “It is the sentencing policy that the sentence ordered must be proportionate to the gravity of the proven guilty. It shall be neither exorbitant nor for the name-sake." (CrlA 2188/2016)