Common Intention Against Common Object

In one line

Common intention needs a shared plan and participation by two or more; common object needs five or more and membership of an unlawful assembly, and no shared plan at all.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the two provisions both attribute the act of one to others, but they are not interchangeable; the principal element of the common intention provision is the common intention to commit a crime, whereas there is no question of common intention in the common object provision, under which an offence committed by one member makes the others liable although there was no common intention between them and no participation by them in the actual commission, provided the offence was committed in prosecution of the common object or was such as the members knew to be likely to be committed in prosecution of it.

The Supreme Court's own statement

Nanak Chand v. State of Punjab, AIR 1955 SC 274, decided on 25 January 1955.

Facts. An appeal in which the accused had been charged under one provision of the group liability scheme and convicted under another, raising directly whether the two are interchangeable.

Held. The common intention provision is merely explanatory and creates no specific offence. Under it several persons must be actuated by a common intention, and when in furtherance of that common intention a criminal act is done by them each is liable for that act as if he had done it alone. There is a clear distinction between the provisions and the two are not to be confused. The principal element of the common intention provision is the common intention to commit a crime. There is no question of common intention in the common object provision: an offence may be committed by a member of an unlawful assembly and the other members will be liable although there was no common intention between them and no participation by them in the actual commission, provided the conditions of the section are fulfilled. There is a difference between object and intention, for although the object may be common the intentions of the several members may differ and may be similar only in being unlawful, while the element of participation in action, which is the leading feature of the common intention provision, is replaced by membership of the assembly at the time of the committing of the offence.

Why it matters here. It is the distinction MU sets, in language a candidate can reproduce, and it makes the practical point that a charge under one is not a charge under the other.

The Privy Council had said the same thing thirty years earlier in Barendra Kumar Ghosh v. King Emperor, (1925) 27 Bom LR 148, whose facts and holding are worked in the Postmaster chapter: the common object provision postulates an assembly of five or more with a common object and then acts done by members in prosecution of that object; there is a difference between object and intention; and the element of participation in action is replaced by membership of the assembly.