High Court cannot downgrade a Section 307 charge by measuring where the wounds landed

Justices Aravind Kumar and Vipul M. Pancholi restored an attempt-to-murder charge, holding that charge framing is no occasion for a mini-trial and Section 216 remains available later.

The Supreme Court has restored an attempt-to-murder charge that the Rajasthan High Court had quashed at the threshold on the view that the victims' wounds fell on non-vital parts of the body. A Division Bench of Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice Vipul M. Pancholi held that the High Court had conducted a summary and technical assessment of injuries at a stage where the only question is whether the material discloses a prima facie case, and that it had overlooked Section 216 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which lets a trial court alter a charge at any time before judgment. The appeal was filed by the injured complainant, not by the State alone, and the respondents accused of the attack did not appear.

A tractor in a Khejri field, and wounds to the bone

The incident was on 26 November 2020 in the appellant's agricultural field at Village Polas, Tehsil Degana, District Nagaur. The appellant was pruning Khejri trees when respondent No. 2, accompanied by family members including respondents No. 3 and 4, drove a tractor into the field at high speed and, according to the prosecution case, repeatedly steered it towards the appellant and his family in an attempt to run them over, striking the appellant's mother, Indra Devi, on her waist and causing her to fall.

The group then assaulted the appellant and his family with sharp-edged agricultural implements, described in the record as kashi and axes. The appellant sustained an incised wound measuring 7 by 3 centimetres, bone-deep, on the outer side of his left arm. His father, Dilip Kumar, suffered two incised injuries, one of them bone-deep over the back of the right wrist, measuring 7 by 3 centimetres, and another 6 by 3 centimetres and muscle-deep on the forearm. His mother sustained an abrasion of 2 by 1 centimetres.

FIR No. 119 of 2020 was registered the next day at Police Station Merta Road under Sections 143, 307, 323, 341 and 447 of the Indian Penal Code. Chargesheet No. 36 of 17 July 2021 implicated the accused under Sections 447, 323, 324 and 326 read with Section 34, and Section 307. The case was committed to the Additional District and Sessions Judge, Merta as Session Case No. 43 of 2021, and on 28 November 2023 that court framed charges against respondent No. 2 under Sections 447, 323, 324 and 326 read with Section 34, and Section 307, and against the remaining accused under the same provisions without Section 307.

What the High Court did on revision

Respondents No. 2 to 4 took the charge order to the Rajasthan High Court at Jodhpur in S.B. Criminal Revision Petition No. 133 of 2024. By order of 1 April 2025 the High Court partly allowed the revision. It reasoned that the injuries suffered by the appellant and his father were on non-vital parts of the body, the wrist and the arm, and that the mother had suffered abrasions, and concluded that the offence under Section 307 was not made out against respondent No. 2 and that “the case may not travel beyond the offence under Section 308 IPC”. The charge under Section 307 was quashed and the trial court directed to frame one under Section 308 instead.

It was the complainant who appealed. Mr. Nishant Bishnoi appeared for him and Mr. S. Udaya Kumar Sagar for the State of Rajasthan, which supported the appeal and argued that the Sessions Judge's order had been well founded on the investigating material. Respondents No. 2 to 4 did not appear despite service of notice having been completed.

The appellant's argument, as the Court recorded it, ran on three tracks. The first was that the settled position does not require a bodily injury capable of causing death to have been actually inflicted, and that intention and knowledge are gathered from the totality of circumstances — the nature of the weapons, the prior enmity between the parties and the manner in which the attack was executed — rather than from the seat or gravity of the wounds alone. The second was factual: that the respondents came driven by animosity from earlier disputes, equipped with axes and a tractor, both instruments inherently capable of causing death in the ordinary course of nature. The third was that the High Court had mischaracterised bone-deep wounds as injuries on non-vital parts while overlooking that they were inflicted on arms and shoulders raised in self-defence against blows aimed at the head. Leave was granted and the appeal taken up.

Section 307 looks at the act, not at the result

On the law the Bench found the position settled. To attract Section 307 a court must ask whether the act, whatever its eventual outcome, was committed with such intention or knowledge and in such circumstances that, had death been caused, the offender would have been guilty of murder.

That formulation comes from State of Maharashtra v. Balram Bama Patil, (1983) 2 SCC 28, and was reiterated in State of Madhya Pradesh v. Saleem alias Chamaru, (2005) 5 SCC 554, and Jage Ram v. State of Haryana, (2015) 11 SCC 366. The Court set out the passage from Jage Ram which in turn reproduces State of M.P. v. Kashiram, (2009) 4 SCC 26: it is sufficient to justify a conviction under Section 307 if there is “an intent coupled with some overt act in execution thereof”; it is not essential that bodily injury capable of causing death should have been inflicted; the section distinguishes between the accused's act and its result; and an accused cannot be acquitted merely because the injuries inflicted were in the nature of simple hurt. Whether there was an intention to kill or knowledge that death would be caused is a question of fact, and the circumstance that the injury was simple or minor will not by itself rule out the section, because “The determinative question is the intention or knowledge”.

The Bench added a recent authority on the precise point the High Court had got wrong. In Surender Kumar v. State of Haryana, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1912, the Court had reiterated that the determining factor is the requisite intention or knowledge coupled with an overt act, and that the mere fact of an injury on a non-vital part of the body does not by itself exclude Section 307.

Why charge framing is not the place to weigh injuries

The second strand concerns the stage at which the question arose. At the framing of charges under Sections 227 and 228 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Bench held, a court is not required to hold a mini-trial or weigh the evidentiary material as if adjudicating guilt after a full trial. It examines whether the investigating material, the witness statements and the records disclose a prima facie case and raise a suspicion against the accused.

Measured by that standard, the material here was substantial. The Court listed what the statements under Section 161 of the Code, the spot inspection reports and the recoveries under Section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 revealed: that respondent No. 2 drove a heavy motor vehicle at high speed into the field and repeatedly steered it towards the appellant and his family, eventually hitting the mother; that he and the co-accused, armed with sharp-edged cutting weapons, assaulted the appellant and his father; that the medico-legal certificates recorded deep incised wounds of up to 7 by 3 centimetres extending bone-deep and 6 by 3 centimetres extending muscle-deep; and that the chargesheet records the appellant's statement that the accused surrounded the family and attacked their heads with axes, and that when the appellant and his father raised their arms to protect their heads the blows struck their shoulders.

That last detail is what the High Court's reasoning could not accommodate. Where the wound lands tells you something about intention only if you ignore how it came to land there. A blow aimed at the head that strikes a raised arm is on a non-vital part because of the victim's reflex, not because of the attacker's aim. The State had put the same point to the Court: that succeeding in warding off a strike to the head does not dilute culpability or negate the intention. It had also pointed to respondent No. 2's past criminal antecedents involving offences against the human body and vehicle-related rashness.

Section 216, the provision the High Court overlooked

The Bench then identified the statutory answer to the High Court's concern. Section 216 of the Code of Criminal Procedure vests in any court the power to alter or add to any charge at any time before judgment is pronounced. If, as the trial proceeds, the evidence shows that the ingredients of Section 307 are not established, the trial court can itself alter the charge to Section 308 or to another appropriate lesser offence.

The consequence is that nothing is lost by letting the graver charge stand. A High Court that downgrades a charge on revision decides on paper what a trial judge can decide on evidence, and does so in a direction that cannot be undone. Interference at the threshold was therefore unwarranted and could not be sustained in law.

Order

The appeal was allowed. The Rajasthan High Court's order of 1 April 2025 was set aside and the Sessions Judge's order of 28 November 2023 framing charge, including under Section 307, against respondent No. 2 was restored. The Bench clarified that its observations are confined to this appeal and shall not influence the outcome or merits of the trial, which is to be decided strictly on the evidence and material placed on record, and directed the trial court to proceed in accordance with law. Pending applications were disposed of.