EMPEROR Vs. BHAGWAN CHHAGAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) OUR attention has been called to a number of these nose cutting cases and it appears to us that certain Magistrates in the Ahmedabad District do not seem to be alive to the extremely brutal character of these offences. In this particular case the person who inflicted the grievous hurt has been charged and convicted under Section 335 of the Indian Penal Code on the ground that there was grave and sudden provocation. This may be so, but the particular act of which the accused is found guilty is one which imports deliberate design. Therefore the plea of grave and sudden provocation or the excuse it implies does not seem to us to have by any means the same effect as in the case of a man who in sudden and provoked anger strikes a blow, however serious that blow may be. Because in that case there is not deliberate design as there is in the one we are considering-deliberate design too of a peculiarly brutal and cruel character.

(2.) THE sentence imposed in this case is one of four months imprisonment. We enhance the sentence to two years rigorous imprisonment.