Intoxication under Criminal Law | Legal Reasoning for CLAT PDF Download

Drunkenness and the Law

• Whereas lunacy is a disease and is therefore to be pitied, drunkenness is a vice and is, therefore, to be condemned. Drunkenness is a species of madness for which man is to blame.
• The law pronounces that the obscuration and divestment of that judgment and human feeling which in a sober state would have prevented the accused from offending, shall not, when produced by his voluntary act, screen him from punishment, although he may no longer be capable of self-restraint.
• Qui pecat ebrius luat sobrius: Let him who sins when drunk be punished when sober. If a man chooses to get drunk, it is his own voluntary act; it is very different from madness which is not caused by any act of the person.
• Now, so far as intoxicated persons are concerned, Sections 85 and 86 are relevant.

Section 85

"Nothing is an offence which is done by a person who, at the time of doing it, by reason of intoxication, incapable of knowing the nature of the act, or that he is doing what is either wrong, or contrary to law: provided that the thing which intoxicated him was administered without his knowledge or against his will."

Section 86

• "In cases where an act done is not an offence unless done with a particular knowledge or intent, a person, who does the act in a state of intoxication shall be liable to be dealt with as if he had the same knowledge as he would have had if he had not been intoxicated, unless the thing which intoxicated him was administered to him without his knowledge or against his will."
• It will, therefore, be seen that for an offence committed in consequence of voluntary drunkenness, there is no excuse in law. If it were otherwise, any murderer would first get himself thoroughly intoxicated, have enough sense to commit the murder, and then plead intoxication as a complete defence.
• However, if a person, by mistake, takes some wrong medicine and gets intoxicated, and then commits an offence, surely, he cannot be made liable. Similarly, if a fraud is practiced on him whereby he is made to take an intoxicant, and then he commits an offence, he cannot be held liable. Such cases are not cases of voluntary drunkenness.

Test of Drunkenness

• The test to apply in cases of drunkenness is not the test applied in cases of insanity, viz., whether the accused person knew what he was doing was wrong or was able to appreciate the nature and quality of his act. However, insanity produced by drunkenness is a defence (under Section 84).
• The correct test is whether by reason of drunkenness, the accused was incapable of forming an intention of committing the offence. A man is taken to intend the natural consequences of his acts. This presumption may be rebutted in the case of a drunken man, by showing that he did not know what he was doing was dangerous or was incapable of forming the specific intent essential to constitute the crime.
• Section 86 says that a person voluntarily intoxicated will be deemed to have the same knowledge as he would have had if he had not been intoxicated. The section does not say that the accused shall be liable to be dealt with as if he had the same intention as might have been presumed if he had not been intoxicated. Therefore, there is no presumption, under Section 86, with regard to intention. In such cases, his intention would have to be gathered from the facts and circumstances of every individual case, having due regard to the degree of intoxication.