Question:
Principle: Whoever causes death by rash or negligent act commits an offence.
Facts: X is having a house on the roadside which is also having a street on the back of the house. He has a lawn on the back of his house where he has built a toilet. To prevent the intruders from entering his house, he got the fence charged with a high voltage live electric wire. Z was passing through the street at the backyard of the house of X and sat down to take rest near the fence. While getting up, his hands came in contact with the fence which was connected to high voltage electric wire causing his death.
Principle: Whoever causes death by rash or negligent act commits an offence.
Facts: X is having a house on the roadside which is also having a street on the back of the house. He has a lawn on the back of his house where he has built a toilet. To prevent the intruders from entering his house, he got the fence charged with a high voltage live electric wire. Z was passing through the street at the backyard of the house of X and sat down to take rest near the fence. While getting up, his hands came in contact with the fence which was connected to high voltage electric wire causing his death.
Facts: X is having a house on the roadside which is also having a street on the back of the house. He has a lawn on the back of his house where he has built a toilet. To prevent the intruders from entering his house, he got the fence charged with a high voltage live electric wire. Z was passing through the street at the backyard of the house of X and sat down to take rest near the fence. While getting up, his hands came in contact with the fence which was connected to high voltage electric wire causing his death.
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Even actions taken to protect property can lead to legal consequences if they are done in a negligent or reckless manner.
Updated On: Jul 15, 2026
- X has not committed any offence because he has right to prevent trespass
- X has committed an offence of causing death by rash and negligent act
- X has committed no offence because he does not have any enmity with X
- X has committed an offence of Murder
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The Correct Option is B
Approach Solution - 1
In this case, X did take measures to protect his property by putting up an electric fence to prevent trespass. However, the electric fence was a highly dangerous action, which caused the death of Z when he accidentally touched it. The principle mentions that any death caused by rash or negligent act is an offence. Even though X might have had the intention to prevent trespass, he did so in an extremely unsafe manner by using a high voltage electric wire. This is classified as rash and negligent because such a measure can easily cause harm to someone who is unaware of it, leading to an unintended death. Therefore, X is guilty of causing death by a rash or negligent act.
Thus, the correct answer is (B).
Option (A) is incorrect because even though X has the right to prevent trespass, the manner in which he did so was hazardous and negligent. Option (C) is incorrect because the lack of enmity is not relevant to the rash or negligent act. Option (D) is incorrect because this is not a case of murder, as there was no intentional killing.
Thus, the correct answer is (B).
Option (A) is incorrect because even though X has the right to prevent trespass, the manner in which he did so was hazardous and negligent. Option (C) is incorrect because the lack of enmity is not relevant to the rash or negligent act. Option (D) is incorrect because this is not a case of murder, as there was no intentional killing.
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Approach Solution -2
This question asks how to classify X's liability after rigging a fence with high-voltage current to keep out trespassers, when it ends up killing someone who merely brushed against it. Let's check each option.
- X has not committed any offence, because he has a right to prevent trespass: Having a right to protect one's property does not extend to using means that can kill anyone who happens to touch the fence, trespasser or not. The right to prevent trespass has to be exercised through reasonable means, and rigging a live high-voltage wire on a backyard fence goes well beyond that.
- X has committed an offence of causing death by rash and negligent act: Charging a fence next to a public street with high voltage, without any warning, creates a serious risk to anyone passing by or resting nearby, which is exactly what happened to Z. This is a rash and negligent way of protecting property, and since it caused Z's death, it fits the offence of death by rash or negligent act.
- X has committed no offence, because he has no enmity with Z: The offence of death by rash or negligent act does not depend on the accused having any personal grudge against the victim. It only requires that a rash or negligent act caused the death, which is present here regardless of any relationship between X and Z.
- X has committed an offence of murder: Murder generally involves an intention to cause death or an act done with knowledge that it is so imminently dangerous that it must in all probability cause death, aimed at a particular person or class of persons. X set up the fence to deter trespassers generally, not to kill any specific passer-by resting nearby, so this is better described as rash negligence rather than an intentional killing.
Since X's setup created a real and unwarned danger to anyone in the area rather than being aimed at killing a specific person, his conduct amounts to death caused by a rash and negligent act rather than murder.
So the correct answer is X has committed an offence of causing death by rash and negligent act.
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Approach Solution -3
This question separates a lawful motive, preventing trespass, from the unlawful manner in which that motive was carried out, and then places the resulting offence in the right category, short of murder. Each wrong option gets one of those steps wrong.
- No offence, since he has a right to prevent trespass: This option correctly notes X's underlying right but wrongly assumes any means of exercising it is lawful. The right to prevent trespass does not extend to a method, an unwarned high-voltage wire, that can kill anyone who merely brushes against it.
- Offence of causing death by rash and negligent act: This option keeps the right to prevent trespass intact but correctly identifies that the chosen method, live wiring a backyard fence beside a public street without warning, was rash and negligent, and that this rashness is what caused Z's death.
- No offence, since he has no enmity with Z: This option treats personal enmity as a requirement for the offence, but the offence of death by rash or negligent act needs only the rash act and the resulting death, regardless of any relationship between X and Z.
- Offence of murder: This option correctly finds an offence but places it in the wrong category, since murder generally requires intent to kill, or knowledge that an act is so dangerous it will probably kill a specific person or class of persons; X's fence was aimed at deterring intruders generally, not at killing Z specifically.
X's right to protect his property does not launder the unsafe manner in which he did so, and that unsafe manner fits the offence of rash or negligent conduct causing death rather than murder, which needs a more targeted intent than these facts show.
Therefore, the correct answer is X has committed an offence of causing death by rash and negligent act.
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Top CLAT Legal Studies Questions
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The Chief Justice said that Section 16 of the Hindu Marriage Act has statutorily conferred legitimacy to children born out of void or voidable marriages. In fact, Chief Justice Chandrachud pointed out that Section 16(3) stipulates that children from void and voidable marriages would have a right to their parents’ property. The court said the intent of granting legitimacy to such children in the Hindu Marriage Act should also be reflected in the Hindu Succession Act, which governs inheritance. Children from void or voidable marriages come within the ambit of “legitimate kinship” and cannot be regarded as illegitimate by the Hindu Succession Act when it comes to inheritance.
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“With changing social norms of legitimacy in every society, including ours, what was illegitimate in the past may be legitimate today. The concept of legitimacy stems from social consensus, in the shaping of which various social groups play a vital role,” Justice Ganguly, who authored the 2011 judgment, had observed.
During the hearings on the reference, Chief Justice Chandrachud had agreed with the Division Bench’s findings that children from void and voidable marriages had rights over the property, whether self-acquired or ancestral, of their parents
[Extracted with edits and revisions from “Children from void, voidable marriages entitled to parents’ share in ancestral property: Supreme Court”, by Krishnadas Rajagopal, The Hindu, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/children-from-void-voidable-marriages-arelegitimate-can-claim-rights-in-parents-properties-sc/article67259229.ece ]
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[Extracted, with edits and revisions from "Child Rights in the Criminal Justice System: Need for Law Reform" written by Dr. Asha Bajpai published in the Journal of the National Human Rights Commission, India]. Definition of Attempt
Direction for the Question:
Read the definition and elements of the attempt, apply them on the given fact situations and answer the question:Definition of Attempt: Lord Blackburn has said that
\(\textit{"there is no doubt that there is difference between a preparation antecedent to an attempt and the actual attempt, but if the actual transaction has commenced which would have ended in the crime if not interrupted, there is clearly an attempt to commit the crime."}\)The two essential elements of attempt are:
- Fault element: Intention or knowledge requisite for committing an offence; and
- Conduct element: Does any act towards its commission and has crossed the stage of preparation. This act is so closely connected with, and proximate to the commission that it fails in object because of facts not known to him or because of circumstances beyond his control.
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Centuries hence you will find Indian children brought up to this spot, just as they visit now the Cawnpore Well, and you can imagine the feelings of these Indians for generations over this terrible business.
[Col. Wedgwood, MP, speaking in the British Parliament, 22 December 1919]
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