Pillar fell on a Class 7 girl: Supreme Court quashes homicide case against school heads
Justice J. B. Pardiwala and Justice Manmohan say two school heads cannot be tried under Section 304 or 304A: an intervening cause broke the chain, and the contractor is prima facie answerable.
The Supreme Court on 2 November 2026 quashed the criminal case against the president and the superintendent of an ashram school in Amravati, Maharashtra. A pillar under construction on the school premises had collapsed on a 12-year-old girl, a Class 7 student, and she died of her injuries.
A bench of Justice J. B. Pardiwala and Justice Manmohan held that the two men could not be tried for culpable homicide under Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code. Nor could they be tried for causing death by negligence under Section 304A.
The person who could prima facie be held responsible, the bench said, was the contractor who did the work. It added that this remark is provisional and depends on the evidence at trial, should the contractor be an accused at all.
Justice Pardiwala wrote the order. The trial may continue against any other co-accused in accordance with law (para 63).
A collapsed pillar and an FIR
The girl’s father, a labourer working at a brick furnace, lodged the First Information Report on 19 February 2020 at Mangrul Chawala police station in Amravati district. It is FIR No. 39 of 2020. His daughter studied at the Adivasi Ashram Shala and lived in its hostel.
The order reproduces the FIR. A teacher from the school came to the furnace on 15 February 2020 and told the father his daughter was ill. At Irwin Hospital he and his wife were taken to the postmortem room, where they learned that a cement-and-brick pillar had fallen on their daughter and other girls of the school.
The father said she had a head injury and died during treatment. He alleged that the school head, Matin Bhosale, had deliberately had the pillar built in a kaccha, substandard way. He said Bhosale and the hostel superintendent took no precautions, and that their carelessness brought it down.
The appellants are the school’s President and its Superintendent, facts the order records as undisputed (para 26). After investigation, Chargesheet No. 15 of 2020 charged both under Section 304 read with Section 34 of the Penal Code, which is culpable homicide not amounting to murder (paras 12 and 26).
The father is the second respondent in the appeal. The Supreme Court served him with notice, but he neither appeared nor sent a lawyer to oppose it (para 5).
What the High Court saw in the cement
The appellants asked the High Court to quash the FIR and the chargesheet. Their case was that even if everything the prosecution said were accepted, no offence of culpable homicide was disclosed (paras 13 and 14).
The High Court refused on 25 February 2026 in Criminal Application No. 239 of 2021. It relied on a chemical analysis of pieces of mortar taken from the site. Two samples held 18.54 per cent and 14.78 per cent cement, with cement-sand-aggregate ratios of about 1:2:2 and 1:3.5:2.
The High Court noted that mixes of 1:2:4 or 1:3:6 were referred to in the analysis, and held that the proper cement ratio had not been kept. Witness statements and the spot panchanama, it said, showed the pillar had not been given a solid base of cement and iron.
It then applied Jacob Mathew v. State of Punjab on negligence and the Bhajan Lal guidelines on quashing. In its view there was a breach of duty and this was no mere accident. It said there was no intention to cause death, but that the appellants knew substandard material could cause harm or death.
What each side told the bench
Mr. Kuldeep Jauhari, for the appellants, argued that the chargesheet disclosed no offence under Section 304 Part-II. As responsible office-bearers of the school, they were accused only of not taking due care while the pillar was built. That, he said, is no voluntary commission of an offence against anyone.
He argued that if Section 304 fails, Section 304A fails too. It is not enough, he said, to show that the appellants’ lack of care was one of the causes of death. The prosecution must show it was the direct consequence, the causa causans and not merely the causa sine qua non.
Mr. Aaditya Aniruddha Pande, for the State of Maharashtra, said the High Court had made no error. A quashing court looks only for a prima facie case and does not weigh evidence, which is the trial court’s function after the trial starts.
He added that a 12-year-old girl had lost her life in a shocking manner. At the least, he said, a rash and negligent act under Section 304A was made out, and the trial court could decide which offence the appellants had committed.
Two sections, two states of mind
The bench framed the issue narrowly. It said the only question was whether the High Court had erred in passing the impugned order (para 25). It answered by setting Section 304 beside Section 304A.
Section 304 has two parts. Part I covers a death caused by an act done with the intention of causing death, or such bodily injury as is likely to cause death. Part II covers an act done with the knowledge that it is likely to cause death, but without intention (paras 27 and 28).
Section 304A, inserted in 1870, covers death caused by a rash or negligent act not amounting to culpable homicide. It is aimed at cases outside Sections 299 and 300 of the Code. Where intention or knowledge drives the act, the bench said, Section 304A must make room for the graver charge (paras 32 to 34).
The order reproduces the framers’ note on the Code. It says no conviction should follow unless the intention or knowledge can be shown from the evidence to have really existed. Because the mind cannot be seen, the framers said, it is read from external acts (paras 29 and 30).
The bench also quoted Naresh Giri v. State of M.P. (2008). There, a bus was hit by a train at a railway crossing and two passengers died. This Court held that Section 304A applies only where there is no intention and no knowledge that death will in all probability follow (paras 37 and 38).
Poor construction is not knowledge of death
The bench concluded that this was not a case of voluntary commission of an offence against a person. Harm caused intentionally, knowingly or directly and wilfully would attract Section 304. A mere failure to meet the standard of care set by law, as the High Court had found, would not be a criminal act (para 39).
The contractor to whom the work was assigned could at most be prima facie guilty of negligence. He knew that poor or inferior construction may lead to an accident. That alone did not show that the appellants knew inferior construction would in all probability kill a student (para 39).
On that footing the bench held that Section 304 could not apply to the two appellants. The High Court had gone from a breach of duty to knowledge. The Supreme Court did not accept that step.
Negligence under Section 304A: why it failed
Having excluded Section 304, the bench turned to Section 304A. It put the question this way:
“whether the mere fact that the appellants herein as the Administrators of the school failed to take appropriate care to ensure the safety of the students by not ensuring proper construction of pillar by itself is sufficient to establish an offence under Section 304A IPC.” (para 41)
The test, it said, is whether the accused’s rash or negligent act was the proximate and efficient cause of the death without the intervention of another’s negligence. The court must ask whether the act was the causa causans, or whether a causa interveniens broke the chain (para 41).
For the meaning of causa causans the bench quoted Sushil Ansal v. State through CBI (2014). It also relied on Kurban Hussein Mohamedalli Rangawalla v. State of Maharashtra (1965) (paras 42 and 43).
That case involved a fire in which seven people were burnt to death. This Court held the deaths were not the direct result of the accused’s negligence and acquitted him under Section 304A.
Applying this, the bench assumed there had been negligence on the appellants’ part. Even so, it said, the incident could not be treated as the direct and proximate result of it. Many other factors might have produced the collapse (para 44).
The contractor and the missing link
The contractor and his team were the ones actually carrying out the construction. If the contractor had taken a little care to ensure the safety of the students, the bench said, the incident probably would not have occurred. The appellants’ alleged negligence was therefore not the causa causans, though it might be a causa sine qua non (para 44).
The bench also held that rashness and negligence are not the same. For criminal rashness, the hazard must be of such a degree that injury was most likely to follow. Criminal negligence is gross and culpable neglect of a precaution that it was the individual’s imperative duty to take (para 45).
It drew on Empress v. Idu Beg and A. W. Lazarus v. The State (Allahabad High Court, 1953) for those definitions (para 46).
It also cited the House of Lords in Andrews v. Director of Public Prosecutions (1937). Lord Atkin there said simple lack of care that gives civil liability is not enough for a crime, and a very high degree of negligence must be proved (para 47).
The order set out the difference between civil and criminal liability. In civil law, negligence is inadvertence that may need only compensation. A crime needs a disregard for the life and safety of others that goes beyond a matter of compensation between subjects (paras 51 to 55).
The bench also quoted Ambalal D. Bhatt v. State of Gujarat (1972), where twelve people died after glucose saline was injected. From it, the bench took the causa causans and causa interveniens question.
It also took the caution that a shocking death should not cloud the judge’s mind (para 56).
Two more rulings followed. Balwant Singh v. State of Punjab (1994) says Section 304A covers only rash or negligent acts that are the direct cause of death (para 57).
Dr. P. B. Desai v. State of Maharashtra (2014), a medical negligence case, says criminal liability for negligence turns on the accused’s state of mind, with recklessness as its classic form (para 58).
Out of the trial, with a caveat
The bench held that the appellants stand on a different footing from any other accused. They should not be made to face trial under Section 304A or under Section 304. At the most, it said, the person prima facie responsible for the student’s death is the contractor (para 59).
That observation, it added, is prima facie and subject to the evidence that may be led at trial, if the contractor is also one of the accused (para 59).
The operative finding was short. The bench said the act attributed to the appellants was not the immediate cause of death, because “there was a cause interveniens, which broke the chain of causation” (para 60).
Grief that cannot decide the case
Justice Pardiwala’s order ends on a personal note. The judges called dictating it a very painful experience. They wrote that the thought of a 12-year-old girl crushed beneath a pillar of her own school made their hearts bleed, and that they could imagine what her parents were going through (para 61).
Such thoughts, the bench said, should not cloud the mind of a judge, or justice cannot be done. However harsh the law may seem, “the law remains the law, and it has got to be respected” (para 61).
Order
The Supreme Court granted leave and allowed the appeal against the High Court’s judgment of 25 February 2026 in Criminal Application No. 239 of 2021. It quashed the criminal proceedings arising from Chargesheet No. 15 of 2020 so far as the two appellants are concerned (paras 1 and 62).
The trial may proceed against any other co-accused in accordance with law (para 63). The order was passed on 2 November 2026.