VII. Crimes Against the Person

parto, che non e’ avvenuto, ed alterare lo stato civile”387. In the case of a still-born child there might be the offence under Section 254.

It may be noted in conclusion that the Civil Code at Section 298 makes it an offence liable to imprisonment up to three months for any person requested by a competent officer to give information concerning the particulars required for the drawing up of, inter alia, an act of birth, refusing to answer any questions put to him by such officer relating to such particulars, or falsely stating that he does not know such particulars. The same punishment according to Section 299 applies against any person who makes any false declaration concerning such particulars. By Section 200 any person who, in a case not specially provided for in the Title, offends against the provisions thereof is made liable to detention for one month.

Nothing in the provisions of the Civil Code affects the application of the provisions of the Criminal Code which we have here discussed if the fact falls under these provisions rather than under the provisions of the Civil Code. This is expressly stated in Section 302(l) which also lays down that any forgery of any of the acts or registers mentioned in the Title or of any certificate or other document which may be delivered, in lieu of the act, in connection with the registration of any birth, (marriage or death) shall be liable to the punishment provided by the Criminal Code in respect of forgery of public writings.

Life, personal safety, and reputation are inherent rights of man, interests inseparable from and fundamental to his personality. They are enjoyed by him as a man, considered by himself, independently of his social position as a citizen of the State. (Carrara). Injuries committed to such rights form the subject matter of this class of offences which, under our Code, comprises:

(a) Homicide

(b) Bodily Harms

387 Arabia, ibid.

(c) Abortion and Administering of Poisons or Injurious Substances

(d) Abandonment and Exposure of Children

(e) Threats and Private Violence; and

(f) Defamation and the Disclosure of Secrets.

Our examination of this list of crimes will naturally begin with those which affect the security of man’s person, employing here that word in the sense of the living body of a human being. Of all such crimes that of HOMICIDE is necessarily the most important; and, to every student of Criminal Law, homicide is a crime particularly instructive inasmuch as in it, from the gravity of the fact that a life has been taken, a minuter arguing than is usual in other criminal cases is made into all the circumstances, especially into the wrong doer’s state of mind. Homicide in general is the killing of a man by another man: “caedis hominis ab homine”. But it may happen that the same effect (the death of a person) may be produced with the deliberate intention of causing death, or with the intention of causing merely a bodily harm, or without any intention but merely through negligence. In the first place you have wilful homicide; in the second case, homicide “praeter intentionem”; in the third case, involuntary or negligent homicide. All these are kinds of homicide which entail criminal liability, though of different degrees, and it is the formal or mental element, which distinguishes the one from the other.

And then there are other homicides which are not criminal at all, i.e., the species of justifiable homicides, and other homicides which though criminal are, for special reasons, less so, i.e., the species of excusable homicides. Be it noted that the meaning of excusable in our law does not strictly tally with that attributed to it, in the same connection by English lawyers)388 .

We must consider all these various species of homicide separately, beginning with the gravest, "the highest crime", as Blackstone called it, "against the law of Nature that man is capable of committing389 .

388 Cfr. Kenny. op. cit., p. 116 et. seq. 389 Comm. IV, 177