SC disapproves gun firing to celebrate marriage ceremonies

The Supreme Court has disapproved the practice of firing bullets during marriage ceremonies in some communities saying guns must be carried with a "sense of responsibility" and are not meant to be used in social gatherings.

"Everybody, who carries a gun with live cartridges and even others know that firing a gun and that too in presence of several people is an act that is likely to cause death, as indeed it did.”

"Guns must be carried with a sense of responsibility and caution and are not meant to be used in such places like marriage ceremonies," a bench comprising justices B S Chauhan and S A Bobde observed.

The remarks were made in a judgement which deliberated on the use of guns to celebrate marriage ceremonies in some parts of the country and communities that on several occasion resulted in casualties.

The apex court made the observation while reducing the life term of a person to seven years imprisonment for the death of a man who succumbed to bullet injury caused by him from his double barrel gun.

The trial court and the Uttarakhand high court had held him guilty of inflicting gun injury with the intention to cause the death at a marriage function, but the Supreme Court said the action of the accused fall in the category of doing a rash and negligent act not amounting to culpable homicide.

The apex court disagreed with the findings of the high court that "a person, who goes to holy ceremony along with double barrel gun, which is used for killing animals, must be said to be going there with the intention to create ruckus and to kill someone in the holy ceremony".

"This observation is not sufficient to attribute the intention to kill a particular person," the apex court said.

"It is also made in disregard of the practice in this part of the country to use guns while celebrating marriages in some communities. We must say at once that we do not mean to approve of this practice in any way.

"It is not possible to agree with the high court that in the instant case the gun was carried to the marriage ceremony only to kill someone," the bench added.