In Brief
Eight persons, including a 1½-year-old child, were brutally murdered by a group of armed assailants forming an unlawful assembly in Tamil Nadu in 1994. The trial court convicted the accused under Section 302 read with Section 34 IPC (common intention). The High Court modified the conviction to Section 302 read with Section 149 IPC (common object/vicarious liability in unlawful assembly), finding that the evidence established an unlawful assembly rather than a pre-arranged common intention plan. The Supreme Court upheld the modification, holding that the eyewitness testimony clearly established the formation of an unlawful assembly with deadly weapons and common object to commit murder. The Court also clarified that while consecutive life sentences are permissible, they must run in conformity with the order of sentence execution rules under Section 31 of the CrPC.
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