Legal Insanity Is Not Medical Insanity

In one line

The law asks only whether the accused could know what he was doing and that it was wrong, so a person who knew both is guilty however ill he was.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: legal insanity is the condition section 22 describes, an incapacity by reason of unsoundness of mind to know the nature of the act or that it is wrong or contrary to law, while medical insanity is any recognised mental disorder, and the two are not the same, because the section is purely cognitive and asks about knowledge alone, so that a disorder which leaves the accused's knowledge intact but destroys his emotional response or his power of self-control gives him no defence, which is the proposition MU's question invites the candidate to amplify.

The distinction

Surendra Mishra v. State of Jharkhand, (2011) 11 SCC 495, decided on 11 January 2011.

Facts. The sole appellant was tried for murder and under the Arms Act. The trial court convicted him and sentenced him to imprisonment for life, and the High Court upheld the conviction. He relied on unsoundness of mind.

Held. A distinction is to be made between legal insanity and medical insanity, and a court is concerned with legal insanity and not with medical insanity. An accused seeking exoneration under the section must prove legal insanity. "Unsoundness of mind" is not defined in the Code and has mainly been treated as equivalent to insanity, but insanity carries different meanings in different contexts and describes varying degrees of mental disorder. Every person suffering from mental disease is not ipso facto exempted from criminal liability. The mere fact that the accused is conceited, odd, irascible and his brain not quite all right, or that physical and mental ailments have rendered his intellect weak and affected his emotions, or that he indulges in unusual acts, or has fits of insanity at short intervals, or is subject to epileptic fits with abnormal or queer behaviour, is not sufficient to attract the section.

Why it matters here. It states the distinction in the words a court uses, and its list of what is not enough is what a problem question is built out of. Notice in particular the words affected his emotions: they are the answer to MU's question, and they come from the Court itself.

Why the section is cognitive

Read section 22 again. Nothing is an offence which is done by a person who, at the time of doing it, by reason of unsoundness of mind, is incapable of knowing the nature of the act, or that he is doing what is either wrong or contrary to law.

Every operative word is about knowing. There is no reference to willing, to choosing, to controlling or to feeling. That is deliberate: the section reproduces the M'Naghten Rules, which were framed in 1843 on the psychology of that time, in which the mind was divided into faculties and the will was regarded as following the understanding.