In Sunil Roy vs. The State of Bihar (2026), Supreme Court's Division Bench of Justices Sandeep Mehta and Vijay Bishnoi passed a 3-page long order dated June 15, 2026, wherein, it upheld the 79-page long final judgment dated February 27, 2023 by Patna High Court's Division Bench of Justices A. M. Badar and Sandeep Kumar in Bharath Roy & Ors. vs. The State of Bihar (2023).
The High Court had dismissed Criminal Appeal (DB) No. 518 of 2014 Bharath Roy & Ors. vs. The State of Bihar and Criminal Appeal (DB) No. 583 of 2014 Shakuntla Devi vs. The State of Bihar (2023) preferred by the petitioner and the co-accused and had upheld the judgment dated April 16, 2014 rendered by the Adhoc Additional Sessions Judge-I, Bhojpur, Ara in Sessions Trial No. 370 of 2012 convicting the accused persons including the petitioner herein for the offences punishable under Sections 302 read with Section 34 and Section 307 read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and sentencing them to suffer imprisonment for life till their natural death along with fine of Rs.2,00,000/- payable by each accused. For the offence punishable under Section 307 read with Section 34 of the IPC, the accused were sentenced to suffer imprisonment for life along with fine of Rs.1,00,000/- payment by each of them. The High Court's judgement was authored by Justice Badar. The case had arisen out of PS. Case No.-33 of 2012, Chaori Thana, Bhojpur. Sunil Roy was the petitioner no. 3 in the High Court.
The co-accused Bharath Roy, Uma Shankar Roy alias Uma Roy and Shakuntla Devi, did not prefer any special leave petition for assailing their conviction, only the petitioner-Sunil Roy was before the Supreme Court by way of the instant special leave petition. The case involves brutal murder of five persons, amongst which two were real brothers of accused No. 1 Bharath Roy, two were his nephews and one was his sister-in-law.
Supreme Court concluded: "7. The case of the prosecution has been well proved by the ocular testimony of PW-1 Akash Kumar @ Vikky Kumar and PW-4 Rubi Kumari, both of whom received injuries in the same incident. 8. Learned counsel for the petitioner was not in a position to convince the Court that the reliance placed by the trial Court and the High Court on the testimony of these two witnesses was unjustified or that the witnesses were not present at the spot. As a matter of fact, the presence of the witnesses at the spot is well established and corroborated by the fact that both of them received injuries in the very same incident. 9. Two competent Courts have recorded concurrent findings of the facts in convicting the petitioner as well as the co-accused and affirming their conviction. The judgments rendered by the Courts below do not suffer from any infirmity and are rather based on sound and thorough appreciation of evidence available on record and assign detailed reasons for arriving at a finding of guilt against the accused persons. 10. In this background, we are not inclined to interfere in the impugned judgment rendered by the High Court. The special leave petition is accordingly dismissed as being devoid of merit."
Justice Badar's judgement reads:"41. Culpable homicide is a genus and murder is its species. The Indian Penal Code practically recognizes three degrees of culpable homicide. Culpable homicide of the first degree is the gravest form which is defined as 'murder' and is made punishable under Section 302 of the IPC. The next may be termed as 'culpable homicide of second degree', which is made punishable under first part of Section 304 of the IPC. The last degree of culpable homicide is 'culpable homicide of third degree' which is made punishable under second part of Section 304 of the IPC. Barring the cases covered by an exception to Section 300 of Indian Penal Code, culpable homicide is murder if an act by which the death is caused is done with the intention of causing death. Otherwise, for making out the offence of murder punishable under Section 302 of the IPC, the prosecution is firstly required to establish that a bodily injury is present on the victim. Secondly, the prosecution is required to establish nature and size of the injury on the victim. Then the prosecution is enjoined to prove that there was intention to inflict the particular injury, by adducing clear and cogent evidence for clarifying that such an injury was not accidental or unintentional. Possibility of injury of other kind intended by the appellant/accused is required to be ruled out. Lastly, the prosecution has to establish that the injury so caused was sufficient to cause death in the ordinary course of nature. If all these factors are established, then only the offence defined under Section 300 of the IPC and punishable under Section 302 of IPC is made out. Similarly, it is well settled that in the offence under Section 307 of Indian Penal Code all the ingredients of offence of murder are present except the death of the victim. Indian Penal Code are lacking, the accused cannot be convicted under Section 307 of Indian Penal Code. Section 307 of Indian Penal Code does not take into consideration the effect of the act of the accused except as a measure of punishment to be imposed on him. In order to constitute the offence under Section 307 of Indian Penal Code actus reus and the requisite mens rea both must concur and the intention precedes the act attributed to the accused. The offence punishable under Section 307 of the IPC is made out when the accused have intended to commit murder and in pursuance of that intention does any overt act towards commission of murder. In order to establish the offence punishable under Section 307 of the IPC, the prosecution is required to establish the intention or knowledge of committing murder and doing of an act towards it. Thus, Section 307 of the IPC contemplates intention or knowledge and not the consequence of the actual act done for the purpose of carrying out the intention."
The High Court's Division Bench had concluded:"....the accused persons had inflicted blows of sharp cutting weapons on vital parts of bodies of all five deceased persons. As seen from the medical evidence adduced by the prosecution, deaths of Kamlesh Roy, Bikash Roy, Vijay Roy, Satyendra Roy and Shanti Devi were resulted because of cardio respiratory failure caused by haemorrhage and shock due to injuries sustained by them on vital parts of their body such as neck, chest and abdomen. Thus, we have no doubt in our mind that blows of sharp cutting weapons were inflicted by the accused persons on the victims with an intention to cause death of their victims. Seat of injury and the weapons used for causing wounds so also the force by which the blows were given on the victims makes it clear that the accused persons were knowing that they were likely to cause death of the victims by inflicting blows by sharp edged weapons. Therefore, the prosecution has established that in furtherance of their common intention, the appellants had caused murders of five victims, thereby committing the offence punishable u/s 302 R/w 34 of the Indian Penal Code. Similarly, it is proved from evidence on record that in furtherance of their common intention the accused persons had attempted to commit murder of P.W.1 Akash Kumar @ Vikky Kumar by inflicting blow of sharp cutting weapon on his chest leading to his hospitalization for a one and half month at P.M.C.H., Patna. The blow was inflicted on his chest with sufficient force making the intention to eliminate him crystal clear. Thus, the prosecution has also proved commission of the offence punishable under Section 307 read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code. 43. As we have carefully gone through the entire case laws relied by the appellants and as we have acted upon the ratio which can be culled out from those rulings, we are not intending to reproduce the ratio by quoting relevant paragraphs from those judgments, for burdening this otherwise lengthy judgment. 44. In the result, both these appeals are devoid of merit and they are accordingly dismissed."
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