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Home / KSLU Solved Papers / B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) / Sem 9 / Penology and Victimology / 2024 Aug / Solutions

B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) Sem 9 Penology and Victimology 2024 Aug Question Paper with Solutions

KSLU Solved Question Papers

Penology and Victimology

Previous Year Question Paper with Solution

B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) · Sem 9

2024 Aug Examination

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Mumbai

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First published on munotes.in on 21 October 2026.

Published by munotes.in, Mumbai.

Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.

Passages from this volume may be quoted, in print, online or by an AI system, with credit: name munotes.in and link to this volume's page. The volume may not be reproduced as a whole. Full terms at munotes.in/content-license.

munotes.in is an independent study resource for students of Karnataka State Law University. It is not affiliated with Karnataka State Law University, and is not endorsed by it.

The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.

The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by Karnataka State Law University at the 2024 Aug examination.

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Contents

The questions below are the paper as Karnataka State Law University set it at the 2024 Aug examination, in the order it was set.

MarksPage

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MarksPage

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The Paper as Set

The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2024 Aug examination, reproduced as Karnataka State Law University set them, in the order it set them. Long reading passages are shortened to their first and last lines and our summary; the original paper prints them in full. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.

Duration 3 hours  ·  Total marks 80  ·  20 questions answered

Instructions printed on the paper

  • N.B. (1) Answer all five Units. (2) One essay type question and short note/problem is compulsory from each Unit. (3) Figures to the right indicate marks. (4) Answer should be written either in English or Kannada completely.

How to use this volume

Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.

Read the original question paper

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Q1

Unit I

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(a)Define punishment. Discuss the concept of punishment during ancient and modern period.[10]

Answer

For full marks, cover: a definition of punishment (Grotius, and the lawful-authority test); the ancient concept in primitive society, the codes of Hammurabi and Moses, Greece and Rome; the ancient Indian concept of danda, its four forms, its limits and prayaschitta; the features of the ancient concept; the modern concept under Indian law (BNS s.4, Article 20, reform, alternatives, a narrowed death penalty) with Mohammad Giasuddin and Bachan Singh; a comparison table.

Definition of punishment

Punishment is the suffering or loss that the State deliberately imposes on a person because he has committed an offence. The Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius described it as an evil of suffering inflicted for an evil of action.

Three things make a hardship a punishment in law.

  1. An offence. It follows a breach of a legal rule. Detention of a sick person in quarantine is not punishment, because there is no offence.
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  1. A lawful authority. It is imposed by the State through a court. A mob beating a thief is a crime, not a punishment.
  2. A proper procedure. Guilt is first found by a fair trial, and the penalty must be one the law allows.

Indian law states the permitted punishments. Section 4 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 (BNS) lists death, imprisonment for life, imprisonment (rigorous or simple), forfeiture of property, fine and community service. It replaced section 53 of the Indian Penal Code 1860 (IPC), which had no community service.

The ancient concept: primitive society

In the earliest societies there was no State to punish. A wrong was a private matter between families.

  1. Private revenge. The injured person or his kin struck back. Revenge invited counter-revenge, and the blood feud could run for generations.
  2. Composition. In time the families agreed to accept a payment instead of blood. In Anglo-Saxon England this payment was the wergild, the price of a man. The wrongdoer paid off the feud.
  3. The group answers. Punishment often fell on the whole family or clan of the wrongdoer, not only on him.
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The ancient codes

  1. The Code of Hammurabi of Babylon, about 1750 BCE, is the best known early code. It applied talion, the rule of "an eye for an eye". The penalty was graded by the social rank of the victim. Its real gain was a limit: the revenge could not exceed the injury.
  2. The Mosaic law of the Hebrews stated the same rule of equal return, "eye for eye, tooth for tooth". It also treated crime as an offence against God.
  3. Ancient Greece. Plato argued that a wise man punishes for the sake of the future, not to avenge the past. He saw punishment as a cure for a sick soul. This is an early form of the reformative idea.
  4. Ancient Rome. The Twelve Tables, about 450 BCE, allowed retaliation for a maimed limb only if the parties did not settle. So talion and composition stood side by side.

The ancient Indian concept: danda

In ancient India punishment was danda, which means the rod. The sources are the Dharmasastra, mainly the Manusmriti, the Yajnavalkya Smriti and the Narada Smriti. Kautilya's Arthasastra, a manual of statecraft, is the other main source.

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  1. The king's duty. Punishment was the king's dharma, a duty and not a choice. A king who failed to punish was said to share the sin of the offender.
  2. Why danda is needed. Without it the strong would devour the weak, like big fish eating small ones. This is the matsya nyaya, the law of the fishes.
  3. Four forms, from light to heavy.
  1. Vak-danda: admonition, a warning by words.
  2. Dhik-danda: censure, a public rebuke.
  3. Dhana-danda: fine.
  4. Vadha-danda: corporal punishment, including mutilation and death.
  1. Limits. Manu required punishment to be proportionate to the offence. The king had to consider the motive, the time, the place and the offender's strength before punishing. Danda wrongly used was said to destroy the king who used it.
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  1. Prayaschitta. This was penance that the offender himself undertook, such as fasting or pilgrimage. Completing it restored him to the community. It is the root of the expiation idea in Indian thought.
  2. Grading by varna. The texts openly graded punishment by caste, to the disadvantage of the lower classes. Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution now forbid this.

Imprisonment was not a main punishment in ancient India. Prisons held people only until trial or execution. Fines were the commonest penalty, and the Arthasastra set them out like a price list.

Features of the ancient concept

  1. Retribution and revenge were the main ideas behind punishment.
  2. Religion shaped it. Crime was often a sin, and punishment purified the sinner.
  3. The body bore the punishment, through whipping, mutilation or death.
  4. Status affected the penalty. Equal punishment for all was unknown.
  5. The victim's family stood at the centre, through revenge and composition.
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The modern concept of punishment

The modern concept grew from the eighteenth century reformers. Beccaria argued in 1764 that certainty of punishment deters more than its severity. Its main features in India today are these.

  1. Only the State punishes. Private revenge is itself a crime.
  2. Legality and fairness. Article 20(1) of the Constitution bars a heavier penalty than the law allowed when the act was done. Article 20(2) bars a second punishment for the same offence. Article 21 requires a fair procedure.
  3. Equality. The same law applies to all, whatever their caste or rank.
  4. Liberty, not the body. Imprisonment is now the main punishment. Whipping was abolished by the Abolition of Whipping Act 1955.
  5. Reform of the offender. Prisons are expected to correct and rehabilitate. Probation, parole, remission and open prisons serve this aim.
  6. Alternatives to prison. The Probation of Offenders Act 1958 lets a court release a suitable offender on good conduct. Community service is now a punishment under BNS s.4(f).
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  1. Individual sentencing. The court hears the accused on sentence before passing it (BNSS s.258(2); earlier CrPC s.235(2)).
  2. A narrowed death penalty. Death is kept only for the rarest of rare cases.
  3. Care for the victim. The court may order compensation to the victim (BNSS s.395; earlier CrPC s.357).

Two cases on the modern concept

Mohammad Giasuddin v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (1977) 3 SCC 287. The accused cheated unemployed young men by promising them jobs. He was a first offender, about twenty-eight, and supported elderly parents. The Supreme Court said punishment should be a process of re-shaping a person who has slipped into crime. It wanted a therapeutic, not a terror, outlook in criminal courts. It reduced his prison term and ordered him to pay a fine to be made over to the victims. The case states the modern, reformative concept.

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Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab, (1980) 2 SCC 684. A Constitution Bench upheld the death penalty for murder. It held that life imprisonment is the rule and death the exception. Death may be given only in the rarest of rare cases, when the alternative is unquestionably foreclosed. The ancient world killed freely; modern law kills, if at all, only as a last resort.

Ancient and modern compared

PointAncient conceptModern concept
Who punishesThe victim's family, later the kingThe State alone, through courts
Main ideaRevenge, retribution, expiationPrevention, proportion, reform
Usual penaltyFine, mutilation, death, banishmentImprisonment, fine, probation, community service
EqualityGraded by rank or varnaEqual law for all (Article 14)
PrisonOnly to hold a personThe main punishment
The offenderAn object of punishmentA person with rights, who can reform
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Conclusion. Punishment is suffering that the State lawfully imposes for an offence after a fair trial. In ancient times it began as private revenge and was then limited by talion and composition. In India it took the form of the king's danda, with penance alongside. The modern concept keeps punishment within section 4 of the BNS and Article 20. It aims at prevention and reform, as Mohammad Giasuddin shows, and keeps death for the rarest of rare cases after Bachan Singh.

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