Unlawful Assembly, Gang Rape and Dacoity from point of view of Joint criminal liability

A crowd gathers outside a housing society gate to force a builder to hand over possession. Most people are shouting. Two pick up stones. One of them breaks the head of the watchman. Is the man at the back, who only shouted, guilty of the injury? Elsewhere, five men break into a jeweller's shop and one of them kills the owner. Are all five murderers? The Sanhita has special rules for group crime, and this topic reads three of them side by side: unlawful assembly, gang rape and dacoity.

In two minutes

Where several persons commit a crime together, the Sanhita makes each answerable for the group's act: members of an unlawful assembly under s.190, each participant in gang rape under s.70 and each of five or more dacoits under s.310, in addition to the general rule of common intention in s.3(5).

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Law of Crimes on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.