Author: Ahana Karmakar, Sister Nivedita University

India’s approach to mental health in various sectors has undergone several changes, including in the field of law. This article focuses on the examination of psychology’s role in criminal law with emphasis on how a part of it is used as a method of defense as stated in Section 22 of BNSS and the various loopholes present in this system. It analyses how various mental health issues are addressed within the Indian judicial system. This article focuses on how psychology has influenced law in the form of forensic psychology, therapeutic jurisprudence and so on. Furthermore, the role of forensic psychology in determining how the various disorders are linked to commitment of crime is also studied. It should be noted that each and every person who has mental health issues is not immune to legal consequences. Finally this article does a critical appraisal of the current legal framework in the protection of the mentally compromised. 

Keywords 

Psychology, psychiatry, criminal law, mens rea, criminal liability.

Psychology and psychiatry focuses on the study of the human behavioural patterns and mental process. This creates a natural intersection with criminal law which similarly involves the analysation of individual culpability and determination of proper legal responses to human behaviour. Compromised mental health often includes disorders such as Post Traumatic Syndrome, Schizophrenia, Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar Disorder which can further raise concerns about legal responsibility due to impaired cognitive and volitional capabilities. The aforesaid mentioned conditions however do not always guarantee legal irresponsibility and a possibility of commitment of a crime. Thus, this raises the question of which disorders actually classify as a valid point for legal defense and how far can that point go? Also, having any mental health condition doesn’t always guarantee immunity from legal consequences. Thus, what exactly classifies as legal insanity? Also, is legal insanity absolute or does it have any middle ground? Section 22 of BNSS replaces “unsoundness of mind” from Section 84 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) with “mental condition,” potentially broadening the scope of psychological defenses to include conditions like PTSD, Schizophrenia, and Bipolar-Disorder.

Several books, articles and research papers have been conducted in this field involving our topic. 

• Case Laws

  1. R v. McNaughten (1843) 

In this case, Daniel McNaughten, suffering from delusions of persecution, had the belief that the British government was conspiring against him. In 1843, he attempted to assassinate the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, but was mistaken and shot and killed Edward Drummond, Peel's secretary. Thus, after that, he was arrested and charged with murder, but had placed the plea of insanity under law. As per the House of Lords, McNaughten was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Through this judgment, the famous McNaughton rule was laid down, which influenced legal insanity standards till this date. The McNaughten rule consists of the classic three-point test, that the sanity of the person was compromised and every person is presumed sane until it is proven otherwise. To establish the defense of insanity, it should be proven that the accused was suffering from a defect of reason, which was caused by a disease of mind, and that the accused was not aware of the nature and quality of act, and even if he did, he did not know what he was wrong, thus leading to absence of the criminal intent.

Citation: R v. McNaughten (1843) 10 Cl & Fin 200.

2. Selvi v. State of Karnataka (2010)

Case facts: This case involved the challenging legality of involuntary administration of certain scientific techniques and tests, such as narcoanalysis, polygraph tests, and brain mapping. It was argued that Article 20, Subclause 3, and Article 21 of a person was violated through this.

Judgement: Selvy v. State of Karnataka, 2010, forcing a person to undergo certain tests, such as narcoanalysis, polygraph tests, and brain mapping without consent, is akin to forcing them to testify against themselves. It was held that testimonial compulsion is prohibited and these tests amount to death. Article 21 was also violated according to the petitioners and the judgment that was given, which included that such practices invade the mental privacy and bodily integrity of individuals and using this against them is cruel, inhuman, or degrading. Consent of the person participating in these tests should also be voluntary and should be recorded before a judicial magistrate. This judgment put a constitutional break on overenthusiastic law enforcement. It showed that investigation techniques and individual rights should be balanced. Also, this is frequently cited in matters involving forensic investigation, privacy, and self-incrimination.

• Indian Evidence Act, 1872 

As per Indian Evidence Act, when a person is accused of any offence, the burden of proving the existence of circumstances bringing the case within any of the general exceptions in the Indian penal court or within any special exceptions or provision contained in any other part of the same court or in any law defining the offence is upon him and the court shall presume the absence of such circumstances.

This study uses various methods to explore the link between psychology and criminal law. It applies special focus on how mental health factors are provided and included in the Indian Law.  The main method of study being doctrinal analysis along with empirical study. This article combines psychological study with legal analysis to showcase how mental health issues affect a person's criminal responsibility and legal results. 

The primary method used in this study is a detailed analysis of the provision of Indian criminal law. Also special focus has been provided on section 22 of BNSS. This study looks at the legal framework, various court interpretations and study of case laws to clarify the definition of legal insanity. This study follows the changes in the legal standard starting from the M’Naghten Role during colonial India to the current judicial practices. If we look into case laws, it forms a crucial component in examining High Court and Supreme Court decisions that play a significant role in shaping the interpretation of mental health defenses. This includes studying successful and unsuccessful insanity pleas to identify patterns in judicial reasoning, the weight given to psychological evidence, and several factors which influence legal outcomes. Thus, this methodology involves the cases which are categorized by type of mental health condition, crime committed, and judicial outcome to identify trends and inconsistencies in application.

The secondary study includes the examination of empirical data on mental health defenses in criminal cases of India. This is a quantitative analysis and helps in establishing patterns in how mental health considerations are applied practically in criminal proceedings. The various sources of data include judicial stats and institutional records from mental health facilities involved in criminal cases. 

Mental insanity can be classified under two prototypes, medical insanity and legal insanity.

The fundamental difference between them is that both represent an important gap in the criminal jurisprudence system , with special emphasis on how the society approaches and deals with this issue within the justice system.

Medical Insanity-

Medical insanity can be defined as a mental illness or a psychiatric disorder which has been diagnosed with established clinical criteria. The professionals use standardized diagnosis such as DSM-5 or ICD-11 to identify the present conditions based on patterns of symptoms, duration, severity and functional impairment. Medical diagnosis is more focused on the cure and treatment of the disorders. For instance a  medical professional would diagnose an individual using the presence of various symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking and so on. Thus the area of focus in this case is very broad and focuses on the treatment of the individual.

Legal Insanity-

Legal insanity on the contrary has a comparative narrower scope and is related to law and designed in order to determine criminal responsibility. Under sector 22 of bnss legal insanity involves proving the accused is mentally unstable and does not have proper understanding of the right and the wrong contrary to law. It denotes that there might be absence of mens rea as the accused might not be capable of forming any intent as such. This denotes that law is more focused on whether the illness would prevent the formation of intent or moral understanding at the time of the offense. 

From a clinical standpoint, an individual may be profoundly mentally imbalanced and yet retain legal sanity. For example, a case of chronic schizophrenia wherein the individual happens to sustain persistent delusions, but that person still has the capacity to understand that assault is wrong. They are therefore legally responsible notwithstanding their medical condition. 

The McNaughten Rule is found in Section 22 of bnss. The rule focuses more on cognition than on whether there has been an emotional or volitional impairment. M'Naghten, coming from the year 1843, has no bearing on modern psychology concerning how illness impacts behavior, decision-making capacity, and self-control. This distinction is of much importance in court proceedings. While medical experts may testify as to the gravity of the defendant's mental ailment, a legal determination must be made whether that ailment meets the particular criteria of legal insanity. The upshot has been that great numbers of seriously mentally troubled people have not been accorded any reduction in criminal responsibility despite their psychological impairments.

This gap often raises the basic questions about whether the legal framework in India should develop means to reflect better on the modern understanding of mental illness and its impact on human behaviour while maintaining the justice system's need for clear workable standards. Section 22 of BNSS deals with issues of criminal liability, where the mental condition has caused a person not to understand the nature of wrongfulness. This bars criminal liability and presence of mens rea, since the individual lacks both the knowledge and does not possess adequate mental capacity to form the intent, an essential element required in the commission of crime. Thus, under such conditions, they cannot be held liable for any crime they have committed. This does give quite limited scope and does leave a huge loophole, as there are some mental conditions which do affect judgement or decision making, but do not entirely preclude the formation of menstruation, hence creating partial responsibility.

The above findings denote that even though the Indian legal system does provide a defense under the pretext of mental insanity it does not provide absolute immunity. The main part of the defense is the offender's mens rea. A person might be suffering from a certain condition related to mental health but that does not guarantee that the person will be legally irresponsible and be at a probability of committing a crime. However in the Indian legal system, the lack of standardized forensic psychological assessment limits the proper diagnosis of the disorder. Traditional criminal law claims that individuals have the capability to form criminal intent. However psychological impairment challenges this basic idea. The application of mental health considerations in criminal law reveals a complex landscape where psychological realities often clash with legal certainties. While Indian criminal jurisprudence acknowledges mental health through provisions like Section 84 of the IPC, the extent of this application remains frustratingly limited and inconsistent.

In recent times, mental health is now applied mainly in criminal law through a complete insanity plea, where it is proved that medical conditions totally negated the ability of the accused to understand the nature of their actions or that their actions were wrong, thus forming no mens rea. However, this binary system, either totally insane or fully responsible, cannot capture the subtle reality of how illness affects human behavior and decision-making. Apart from Section 22 of BNSS, other provisions hardly evoke mental health spirit, such as juvenile justice provisions have developmental psychology, domestic violence law recognizes psychological abuse, courts, in general, have a piecemeal appreciation of mental health in the sentencing decisions. All these, however, do not amount to applications with systematic integration and are merely more or less based on directional judicial benevolence rather than established legal doctrines which is actually required.

The limitations or the extent of the application of mental health in criminal law has several critical gaps. For example, the threshold of legal insanity and legal irresponsibility captures an incredibly small number of individuals who may have severe mental health issues but still have some basic cognitive awareness, thus creating a grey area. Although they may not be able to make the rational choice or not have the awareness of the emotional storm they were expecting at that time. However, conditions like personality disorders, severe depression, PTSD, or addiction, for example, never reach the incredibly high threshold of being completely legally irresponsible. This creates a grey area which gives rise to partial responsibility. Secondly, the focus on the specific incident moment of offence also misses out on the episodic nature of many health conditions. In some cases, the person who is accused may be legally competent at the time of the trial but did not show any relevant signs of the acute psychological distress or anguish they were suffering at the time of charged offences. The time lag aspect of mental health evaluation also adds more complexity to the mental health evaluation and application of criminal law. This creates a significant amount of challenge so that this area of provision of law cannot be misused or cannot be abused through any loophole that may be abused by many individuals by pleading legal insanity.

The application of mental health and criminal law also faces a certain quota of challenges, which are systematic in nature. For example, limited availability of forensic psychologists who are qualified, inadequate training for legal professionals in mental health issues, and cultural stigma surrounding psychological conditions are all restrictive in effective implementation. Also, the courts often rely on an understanding which is outdated and face conflict in expert and and face conflicting expert opinions without clear frameworks for resolution. This in turn creates an environment in which the implementation becomes extremely challenging.

More significantly, the current binary approach fails to recognize that mental health conditions often exist on a spectrum. Many individuals experience psychological impairments that not always completely eliminate responsibility but substantially do affect their culpability. The absence of graduated responsibility concepts in Indian criminal law means that the defendants are either fully responsible or completely excused with middle ground. This middle ground should be introduced so that a person who may during the time of the trial show that they are not mentally incompetent but were mentally challenged during the time of the commission of crime.

Mental health application in criminal law must evolve to reflect the contemporary psychological understanding while maintaining legal clarity and public safety. This evolution might include recognizing diminished capacity defenses, implementing specialized mental health codes, or developing more advanced approaches to sentencing that consider psychological factors without completely excusing the crime committed or the criminal behavior. The challenge lies in expanding the application of mental health considerations beyond the narrow confines of complete insanity while preserving the criminal justice system's fundamental principles of accountability and deterrence.

To examine the convergence of psychology and criminal justice in India, we can notice that it is complicated and often insufficient in understanding of the issues of mental health in the justice system. I hope that I am able to show here that not only does Indian criminal law accept the existence of the role of psychological state through provisions such as Section 22 in B.N.S.S., but the inadequacies of the legal system also fall short of modern views on mental health and criminality. It can be noted that the nature of confusion between legal insanity and medical insanity is the worst gap in the Indian legal system, in the Indian legal reasoning today. The limited cognitive tests established in Section 24 rooted in McNaughten Rule of 24 ignores the more developed model of psychiatric understanding which understands how the volitional aspects to mental illness affect the ability of the person to consciously and rationally control the thoughts and emotions and work through decisions. The legal system only entertains the either-or option of being completely insane or fully responsible, whereas psychologists recognize a middle ground which is a continuum of psychological impairment that may be present when it comes to manifesting criminal behavior. These impairments may interrupt modern understanding without negating it entirely. Thus, this creates a grey area which shows that there is a possibility of partial responsibility and not absolute behavior. The issue of menstruation is an additional dilemma when dealing with people who experience mental health problems. Arguably, the criminal law in India does account for the guilty mind as an essential trigger for liability of criminal acts. However, through the allocation of psychological impairments, the resulting limitation on the ability of litigant to demonstrate an intention without necessarily meeting the threshold of legal insanity, demonstrate the complexity of demonstrating menstruation for somebody with serious impairments in their mental health. The trouble with this is that there are cases where people with serious issues around their mental health are saddled with full criminal responsibility without a hope of being able to plead insanity.