Court caseAIR 1960 Ori 161

Ram Bahadur Thapa, a Nepali servant of Jagat Bandhu Chatterjee, was at Rasgovindpur in Balasore district, near an abandoned aerodrome that the locals believed to be haunted. One night he, his master and a local person went out to see the ghosts. Seeing flickering lights and figures moving in the dark, Thapa believed them to be ghosts and attacked with his khukri. The figures were Majhi women of the village collecting mohua flowers under a hurricane lamp; one woman was killed and two others injured. The sessions judge acquitted him under s. 79 IPC and the State appealed.

The Orissa High Court upheld the acquittal. Good faith under s. 52 IPC requires due care and attention, but the care expected is that of a person in the position of the accused with his intelligence and circumstances, not of a detached reasonable man: Thapa was a Nepali stranger who had been told that the place was haunted, it was night, the figures moved in a strange way, and his companions also believed in ghosts. His belief that he was striking at ghosts was honest and, in his situation, reasonable; a person who, by mistake of fact in good faith, believes himself justified in doing an act commits no offence.