Court discharges accused of robbery, saying "Hurt must be intended to facilitate offence of theft"

New Delhi [India], May 2 : A Delhi Court has recently discharged the accused persons of the offence of robbery in view of the absence of relation between the assault and offence of the theft and said that the hurt caused must be intended with the object of facilitating the committing of the theft.

Metropolitan Magistrate Neha Mittal discharged Pankaj Gupta and other accused persons from the offence of robbery (392/394) IPC. However, the court has charged the accused persons with theft, causing hurt and other offences under section 380/323/427/451/411/34 IPC.

In the present case, as per the version of the prosecution, the accused persons first belaboured (physically attacked) the complainant and his brothers and subsequently committed the theft of cash, the Magistrate said.

"Thus, it cannot be said that whatever injury has been caused, was caused when the assault was made with the primary objective of enabling the accused persons to commit the theft," the Magistrate observed.

"The assault or beatings appear to have no relation whatsoever to the commission of the theft although the theft was committed immediately afterwards," the judge said.

In view thereof, all the accused persons are discharged under section 392/394 IPC, the court ordered on April 25.

The Court said that the case of the prosecution is that charge u/s 392/394 IPC is made out as hurt was caused while committing theft from the shop of the complainant.

A perusal of section 390 IPC shows that theft becomes robbery if some stipulated conditions are fulfilled, the court said.

The words 'for that end' in section 390 IPC clearly mean that the hurt caused must be with the object of facilitating the committing of the theft or must be caused while the offender is committing theft or is attempting to carry away property obtained by theft. It does not merely mean that assault or hurt must be caused in the same transaction, the court further said.

It was argued by advocate Deepak Sharma, the counsel for all accused persons that a charge under section 392/394 IPC is not made out against the accused persons as no robbery as per section 390 IPC is made out.

It was further argued that a bare perusal of the statements of witnesses shows that they have been copied and pasted and have not been recorded by the IO properly.

Advocate Sharma further argued that the CCTV footage of the incident has not been placed on record by the Investigation Officer (IO) despite its availability which shows that the accused persons have been falsely implicated.

On the other hand, the Additional public prosecutor (APP) for the State has submitted that there is sufficient material on record to frame the charge against all the accused persons.

After hearing the submissions, the court said that the law is well settled and that at the stage of framing of charge, the court is not required to sift through the material available on record.

In the present case, the complainant has alleged that on October 14, 2021, at around 11:00 pm, all the accused persons came to his shop in Shastri Nagar, Delhi and when the complainant refused to give the articles demanded by them, the accused Pankaj along with his associates started beating the complainant and his brothers namely Reemanshu and Ashish.

It was further alleged that in the meanwhile, the accused persons entered the shop of the complainant and took away the money from the Galla of his shop and also broke his counter.

"Perusal of the statement of the complainant and his brother shows that they have reiterated their allegations with the improvement that the complainant was attacked with a sharp iron object and that accused Ishu snatched the mobile phone of the complainant and broke it," the court noted in the order dated April 25.