NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has discharged two men in a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder of two workers who were electrocuted in 2013 during the repair of sign board at a shop, after finding that there was no intention or knowledge on the part of the accused.
A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan discharged Yuvraj Laxmilal Kanther and Nimesh Pravinchandra Shah, holding the incident as "purely accidental".
The court said no prima facie case can be said to be made out against the appellants for committing an offence under Section 304A (causing death by negligence) IPC, not to speak of Section 304 Part II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) IPC.
The prosecution story accepted by the trial court and the High Court, claimed the two accused persons had not taken proper care and caution by providing safety shoes, belt etc to two employees Salauddin Shaikh and Arun Sharma, though they were asked to perform the job of working on the sign board as part of decorating the front side of the shop at Pune, approximately at a height of 12 feet from the ground level.
"Even if we take the allegation against the appellants as correct, we are afraid no prima facie case can be said to have been made out against the appellants for committing an offence under Section 304 Part II IPC," the bench said.
In its judgment on March 7, 2025, the court noted there was no intention on the part of the two appellants to cause the death or cause such bodily injury as was likely to cause the death of the two deceased employees.
After going through the materials, the bench said, "It cannot also be said that the appellants had knowledge that by asking the two deceased employees to work on the sign board as part of the work of decoration of the frontage of the shop, they had the knowledge that such an act was likely to cause the death of the two deceased employees".
The court also rejected the Maharashtra government's counsel bid to place reliance upon the Bhopal gas tragedy case 'Keshub Mahindra Vs State of MP' (1996) (Bhopal Gas Tragedy case) to justify the framing of charges for the incident of September 27, 2013.
The court said the facts of the present case are poles apart from that case.
In the infamous Bhopal Gas tragedy, the bench said, 3828 human beings lost their lives; 18922 suffered permanent injuries; 7172 suffered temporary disablement; 1313 suffered temporary disablement caused by permanent injuries; and permanent partial disablement was suffered by 2680 persons.
This court upon perusal of the material on record had then held mere act of running a plant as per permission granted by the authorities would not be a criminal act, the bench said.
"However, considering the gravity of the incident, this court exercised power under Article 142 of the Constitution to hold a prima facie case was out for the accused to face trial under Section 304 A of the IPC," the bench said.
In the present case, the court, however, said the trial court and the High Court fell in error in rejecting the discharge applications of the appellants Kanther and Shah, interior decorator and store operations manager respectively of M/s lntergold Gems Private Limited.
The FIR was lodged on December 04, 2013 at Vishrambag Police Station against the appellants.
In their arguments, the appellants contended neither any negligent or rash act was committed by them nor any specific overt act can be attributed to them.
They said they have paid compensation to the legal heirs of the two deceased employees and provided employment to brother of Shaikh and took care of educational expenses of Sharma's children.
