NDLI: Dinesh Kumar Kalidas Patel Vs. The State of Gujarat

Content Provider	Supreme Court of India
e-ISSN	30484839
Language	English
Access Restriction	NDLI
Subject Keyword	Section 201 1860 Unnatural death Penal Code
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Law Judgement
Jurisdiction	India
Act(s) Referred	Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (2 of 1974) Indian Penal Code (45 of 1860)
Case(s) Referred	Referred Case 0 Referred Case 1 Referred Case 2 Referred Case 3 Referred Case 4 Referred Case 5
Case Type	Appeal
Court	Supreme Court of India
Disposal Nature	Appeal Allowed
Headnote	Penal Code, 1860: s.201 – Whether conviction under s.201 could be maintained while acquitting the accused of main offence – Held: A charge under s.201 can be independently laid and conviction maintained also, in case the prosecution is able to establish that an offence had been committed, the person charged with the offence had the knowledge or the reason to believe that the offence had been committed, the said person has caused disappearance of evidence and such act of disappearance has been done with the intention of screening the offender from legal punishment – Mere suspicion is not sufficient, it must be proved that the accused knew or had a reason to believe that the offence has been committed and yet he caused the evidence to disappear so as to screen the offender. s.201 – Unnatural death – Prosecution case was that the wife of the accused committed suicide by hanging – Last rites attended by father and brother of the deceased – After four months the father of the deceased initiated criminal proceedings against accused under various sections including s.498A and s.201 – Trial court convicted the accused under s.498A and s.201, however, High Court set aside conviction under s.498A while maintaining conviction under s.201 on the ground that appellant did not give intimation to the police of the unnatural death and that no post mortem was conducted – On appeal, held: Neither the trial court nor the High Court had any case that there was any intentional omission to give information by the appellant to the police under s.202 against the appellant – Mere fact that deceased allegedly died an unnatural death could not be sufficient to bring home a charge under s.201 – Unless prosecution was able to establish that accused knew or had reason to believe that an offence has been committed and had done something causing the offence of commission of evidence to disappear he cannot be convicted – There was no such allegation against the appellant – The last rites of the deceased were performed in the presence of the members of her family – They had no suspicion at that time of the commission of any offence – The private complaint was lodged after more than three months – It was also not the case of the complainant that he had requested for post-mortem of the body and that intimation should have been given to the police before the last rites were performed – In the facts and circumstances, the conviction of the appellant under s.201 was not maintainable.
Judge	Hon'ble Mr. Justice Kurian Joseph
Neutral Citation	2018 INSC 133
Petitioner	Dinesh Kumar Kalidas Patel
Respondent	The State Of Gujarat
SCR	[2018] 1 S.C.R. 641
Judgement Date	2018-02-12
Case Number	265

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