This article has been written by Samarth Suri, a student of Symbiosis Law School, NOIDA. 

Insanity as a defense comes under General exceptions in the Indian Penal Code, which range from sections 76-106. 

Section 84 of the code provides for the defense of Insanity: Nothing is an offence which is done by a person who, at the time of doing it, by reason of unsoundness of mind, is incapable of knowing the nature of the act, or that he is doing what is either wrong or contrary to law.

This law till some extent has its basis in the maxim of Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, meaning that an act alone cannot hold a person guilty without a guilty intention. Though the word insanity has not been used anywhere, it has been used in terms of unsoundness of mind. A person of unsound mind is Non compos mentis, which may include an Idiot, one who is made so by illness, a lunatic or a mad man or a drunkard. An Idiot is one, who from birth had a defective mental capacity, in that there are no lucid intervals i.e.- it is perpetual. The people who cannot count till 12, or who don’t know the names of their parents come under this category. A lunatic is a person who becomes insane and whose incapacity might be at intervals, a madman is one who has permanent lunacy. Lunacy and madness are spoken off as acquired insanity, whereas idiocy is understood as natural insanity. 

Intoxication tantamount to unsoundness of mind

Intoxication also comes under the contours of Unsoundness of mind for the basic reason that even during intoxication, the person is incapable of forming a mens rea, that is essential for committing a crime. 

Section 85 of the Act provides for the defence of intoxication. It exonerates a person who does a crime in a state of intoxication if: 

1. He was incapable of knowing the nature of his act or;
2. That what he was doing was either wrong or contrary to the law. 

Provided that the thing that was administered to him was administered without his knowledge or against his will. The expression “without his knowledge” means ignorance of fact, that the thing that was being administered to him had an intoxicant, “against his will” would mean that the person is not doing the act out of his own volition, but rather due to force applied by an external agent. 

In contrast to this voluntary drunkenness- is held as a crime, this is based upon the legal maxim Qui peccat ebrius, luat sobrius, meaning that one who sins when drunk must be punished when sober. For one to take the defence of intoxication , it must be proven that it was involuntary and this can be distinguished from lunacy and idiocy because the latter is not due to any fault of the person himself but rather due to his circumstances or by birth, whereas drinking is a sin in the first place and even if a drunkard commits a crime, with the prerequisite that he is not able to judge the nature of his act or his cognitive abilities are so destroyed that he falsifies in construing the difference between right and wrong , he shall not be given the defence unless it is involuntary. The same was held in the case of Ramsingh Chauhan v. State of Gujarat, wherein the court explicated that Murder committed by the accused under voluntary intoxication, will not be made Culpable Homicide not amounting to murder. 

Even besides the Section, courts have come up with rules regarding the application of Section 84 of the Act. 

In the Sundra Majhi case, the Cuttack High court laid down certain principles with relation to this section. 

1. First the court must presume the absence of Insanity, so that the burden of proof to prove insanity lies upon the defense.
2. The Court must also construe, whether the accused suffered from the alleged insanity at the time of committing the act or not, because section 84 only provides protection to people who suffer from insanity only at the time of doing the act. 
3. To acknowledge the dichotomy between medical insanity and legal insanity. Meaning that the cognitive faculty must be so destroyed as to render one incapable of knowing the nature of his act, or what he was doing was contrary to the law. 

Once Unsoundness of mind has been determined, it is essential to be construed that this unsoundness of the mind led to the cognitive destruction of the accused in knowing that the nature of the act that he is doing is contrary to the Law. Ashiruddin Ahmed v. The King explains this point, wherein the accused who was commanded by someone is paradise, took his 5-year-old son into a mosque and thrust a knife in his throat, afterwards he went to his uncle and quietly told him what he had done. In this the court allowed the accused to take the defense of section 84 of the Act, as it is shown by the very actions of the accused that he was not aware, whether the act he was doing was contrary to the law. 

Mcnaughten Rules

For many years these rules have been used in deciding cases related to section 84. In this case there was a person, who suffered from “persecution Mania”, wherein he felt that a gang of persons were following him, slandered him and prevented him from going around. One day at Charing cross railway, he shot one person who he shot a person, thinking him to be Sir Robert Peel, who was the Prime Minister of England and who he felt was responsible for all his problems. He was acquitted by the jury, on the basis of Insanity. 

• What is the law regarding crimes committed by people afflicted with insane delusion? 

To this the court explained that, such persons who have partial delusions and are lucid at other times will nevertheless be held guilty for the crime. 

• In what terms the question ought to be left on the jury as to the prisoner’s state of mind while committing the crime?

It has to be shown that the accused at the time of committing the crime was under the defect of such reason, as to render him incapable of knowing the nature of the act that he was doing, or what he was doing was contrary to the law. If the accused was conscious of the act that he was doing, and the same was contrary to the law, he will be held liable. 

• If a person under an insane delusion as to the existing facts commits an offence in consequence thereof, is he thereby excused?

This would actually depend on the nature of delusion. For example, if a person under an insane delusion, that another man is going to kill him, murders the other man, he would suppose this as self-defense and therefore would be exonerated from punishment. However, if the accused was under the delusion that he other will slander him and cause grievous hurt to his reputation, and then he kills him, that would be treated as a crime. Hence the culpability of the accused will depend upon the nature of delusion that the accused had suffered with at the time of committing the crime. 

• Can a person from the medical fraternity, conversant with the disease, who has not met the accused before, but was present during the entirety of the trial be asked for an opinion? 

To this the court said that a medical person in all strictness cannot be asked for his opinion as the matter has been examined legally and with reference to its facts, which is for the jury to decide. This even gave testament to the held distinction between legal insanity and medical insanity and that in a court of law only Legal insanity will be held as valid. 

Distinction between legal and medical test of Insanity

The legal definition of insanity is different from the medical one. First is that the medical and legal standards of sanity are not identical. From a medical point it should be said that every person who commits a crime is not sane at that point, he is not sound, healthy and therefore needs treatment. From a legal standpoint a person is viewed as sane till the time he can distinguish between right and wrong, and knows the act that he is doing is contrary to the law. 

Secondly, for establishing legal insanity, the person’s cognitive abilities at the time of committing the crime should be destroyed. However, there is no such distinction in the medical sense. 

Thirdly, the court will look for evidence to support the insanity of the accused before or after the crime. A medical man would recognize that such insanity may prop up at any time, springing up in the mind of the person, not revealed by previous conduct of the accused. However the court shall analyze the previous and subsequent acts of the accused as well as proof of his underlying medical condition to construe his feelings of insanity that disabled his cognitive abilities at the time of commission of the crime. 

Whether Section 84 of IPC is a loophole? 

Now seeing Insanity as defense from the perspective of a loophole, it is clear that is prima facie an excuse, that although the accused admits to the actions that he has done, but is taking the excuse that due to his cognitive disabilities, he did not know what he was doing was contrary to the law. This is because for a crime to take place both a guilty act as well as a guilty mind are necessary, and a person of unsound mind won’t have a guilty mind. This rule is also based upon the legal principle of Furiosi nulla voluntas Est, which means that a person with mental illness has no free will and therefore cannot do any wrong. 

Is misuse of Section 84 of the Act possible? 

Now that all the essentials of insanity and section 84 of the Act have been discussed, it is imperative to also note that grave misuse of section 84 is possible, it is because it is extremely difficult for the jury/ judge to actually know whether the accused was of unsound mind while committing the crime or not. The judge will have to rely upon the evidence which is adduced in form of previous and subsequent medical conditions and testimony of witnesses. Intoxication also comes under the definition of unsound mind, although it might be temporary in nature. Section 85 of the Act provides for the defense of intoxication provided that the intoxicant was administered to him without his knowledge or against his will. Knowledge in this scenario will be tantamount to intent. 

Analyzing Section 84 as a loophole, taking into consideration Adversarial form of Litigation followed in India 

Now adjudication of justice is done by the courts, which are essentially made up of judges and lawyers. The Judges access the case upon its merits and then give their decision. Especially India being a country following an adversarial model, judges have less interaction as compared to the lawyers. Which means that judges cannot probe investigations of their own, they play the role of an adjudicator, they have to give decisions based upon the evidence provided by both the parties infront of the court. In contrast to this in an inquisitorial model the Judge can act as the police and probe investigation of his own, also he can cross question the accused as well as the witnesses example of some countries following the inquisitorial model are- Germany, To round up the concept of an adversarial model, I would take an example. 

Peter Murphy in his book, Practical Guide to Evidence recounts an instructive example. A frustrated judge in an English (adversarial) court finally asked a barrister after witnesses had produced conflicting accounts, ‘Am I never to hear the truth?’ ‘No, my lord, merely the evidence’, replied counsel.

It would almost seem as if I would be digressing from the topic, but essentially the adversarial system also allows for lawyers to use the nuances of law in the favour of their client. Therefore, meaning that it is not 100% possible every time to judge the mind of the accused while committing the crime, his delusions, mental ailment are truly only known to him, and the court can merely rely upon the evidence. An adversarial mechanism does not allow for the judge to base the decision upon what he thinks is true, it is based upon what is provided in court and what can be deduced from that as truth.

Now as the judge is to give the judgement based upon the evidence that is adduced in the court, sometime it may be possible that the prosecution is not able to provide evidence with regards to the sanity of the accused, and the defence lawyer takes an advantage of this and turns the case in favour of the accused. 

Hence it is not possible to pinpoint cases wherein Section 84 has been misused as a loophole, but it is also not to say that this is not possible because our judicial system is based on evidence and not truth. The Judge is to dispense justice based upon what is provided inside court and not based upon his personal volition. 

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