Unit 2: Offences against Person — Homicide (Definition and Classification; Provisions Relating to Homicide in Nepal); Abortion; Hurt (Kutpit); Human Trafficking and Transportation; Abduction and Kidnapping (and Their Distinction); Criminal Defamation (Libel and Slander); Domestic Violence
1. Homicide
1.1 Definition and Classification of Homicide
Homicide — the killing of a human being by a human being. Law’s oldest taxonomy:
- Lawful (justifiable/excusable) homicide: execution of lawful sentence, self-defence’s fatal extremes, the accident without negligence (the surgeon’s careful death) — no crime (Criminal Law-I, Unit 7’s defences);
- Unlawful (criminal) homicide: the graded ladder of culpability —
– Intentional murder (murder proper: the purpose to kill, or the virtual certainty knowledge);
– Knowledge/recklessness-based homicide (the intentional-harm death — the blow meant to maim that kills; the consciously risked death);
– Negligent/culpable homicide (the careless death: the rash driver, the careless doctor, the fallen scaffolder);
– Suicide-related homicide: abetment of suicide (the instigation that kills), the suicide pact’s survivor, attempted suicide itself (decriminalized or leniently treated across the modern world — Nepal treating attempted suicide as a health matter rather than a criminal priority, the reform debate noting);
– Special-contextual forms: infanticide, dowry-type deaths, custodial deaths (the human-rights overlays).
The murder/culpable-homicide boundary — the classical problem (the IPC’s famous distinction, carried into comparative doctrine): all murder is culpable homicide, but not all culpable homicide is murder — murder is culpable homicide plus the special ingredients of intention (to kill) or knowledge (of the act’s deadly probability), while the lesser grades carry reduced intent, provocation’s mitigation, or the sudden fight’s heat. Criminal Law-I Unit 4’s mens-rea ladder (intention → knowledge → recklessness → negligence) is homicide’s grading science.
1.2 Provisions Relating to Homicide in Nepal
The Muluki Ain’s classical scheme: the old Chapter on Homicide’s numbered khanas
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