The court held that the accused failed to establish his plea of insanity and that the accused knew the nature of the act and that he was doing what was wrong or contrary to law.

( 1 ) THE accused-appellant Ramdulare has been convicted by the fourth Additional sessions Judge, Jabalpur, under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code for committing the murder of Chhedilal, alias Chiddi Nai on the morning of 4-1-1957 at his own house in Uprenganj, Jabalpur, and sentenced to imprisonment for 'life. His appeal is that on the facts established he ought to have been held of 'unsound mind within the meaning of Section 84 of the Indian Penal Code and consequently exempted from criminal responsibility for the aforesaid murder. (sic) within the meaning of Section 84 of the Indian Penal Code was the only defence raised at the trial. That section lays down:

"nothing is an offence which is done by a person who, at the time of doing it, by reason of unsoundness of mind, is incapable of knowing the nature of the act. or that he is doing what is either wrong or contrary to law. "

( 2 ) A Division Bench of this Court in State v. Chhotelal Criminal Ref. No. 26 of 1957 d/- 20-11-1957 : (AIR 1959 Madh Pra 203) to which one of us (Naik J.) was a party, examined in some detail what exactly an accused has to establish in order to claim exemption from criminal responsibility on the ground of insanity within the meaning of Section 84 of the Indian Penal Code. Opinion was expressed therein that -

"with the development of psychiatry as a Recognised branch of medical science, we may have to revise our opinion regarding what constitutes unsoundness of mind for the purpose of Section 84 of the Indian Penal code as laid down in some of the old cases. "

The law is based on the Mcnaughten rules as laid down in 1843. "in 1843 law and medicine were in agreement as to what insanity is. The basis of this agreement was the notion that the mind is divided up into compartments some of which can be diseased while the others remain intact. Since 1843 medical views as to insanity have changed. Psychiatrists now agree that the mind is a whole, a unity, and that a person cannot be mentally and emotionally diseased without his total personality being affected. The courts, however, have continued to use the standards of over a hundred years ago. "

(Murder, Madness and The law by Louis H. Cohen, M. D. ). Sir David Henderson and the late R. D. Gilleppie in their "textbook of Psychiatry," 1956 Edition, at p. 712, say:"the Mcnaghten rules smack of the ancient and medically out-of-date doctrine or mental faculties, the mind being regarded as divided up into a series of independent compartments the cognitive faculty being one of the large subdivisions. With this doctrine there flourished almost inevitably the belief in the existence of partial insanities in which one mental compartment and faculty was affected and not any other. Medical views have changed, but the law has not advanced pari passu. Medicine has come to recognise that the mind is a whole, one and indivisible. There is no mental disorder, however partial in appearance, that does not have its reverberations throughout the rest of the affected mind. Consequently the purely intellectual criterion of responsibility falls to the ground, for the intellect as intellect may be unimpaired, but an emotional disturbance will alter or impede or nullify its effect on conduct. Conversely, intellectual defect means deficient emotional control. There is no allowance made at all for such phenomena as are well known to psychiatrists -- the intrapsychic ataxia of schisopherenia, post-hypnotic and epileptic automatisms, and the overwhelming influence of affective)disorder, which may, for example, cause a depressed parent to murder his children whom he loves, and whom he knows full well it is morally wrong to kill. "

The learned authors have pointed out that the reason for the difference in medical and legal criteria of responsibility was that --"the former concerns himself with the welfare of the individual, the latter with the safety of society. The difference, however, goes even deeper. The legal concept is of