Mistake V/s Recklessness

The Supreme Court of India has ruled that an error of judgement on the part of a doctor, resulting in the patient’s death could not be termed as a ‘criminal’ act. It ruled that the standard of negligence should be so high that it is ‘gross negligence’ for the act to be regarded as ‘criminal’.

Justice Dharmadhikari, writing for the bench, said it could be termed ‘criminal’ only when the medical man exhibited a gross lack of competence or inaction and wanton indifference to his patient’s safety and which is found to have arisen from gross ignorance or gross negligence.
“Where a patient’s death results merely from error of judgement or an accident, no criminal liability should be attached to it,” the Supreme Court said.

I wonder… if death is the result in both the cases,

• Carelessness or error in judgement on the part of the doctor, resulting in death of the patient
• Gross lack of competence and/or wanton indifference on the part of the doctor, resulting in the patient’s death

then would the first be termed as ‘manslaughter’ and the second be termed as ‘criminal manslaughter’??

This kind of granularity is welcome since it makes a clear distinction between an honest mistake and recklessness… and lays out different levels of sentences for them.

But I hope this is applied to other areas of the law as well. For instance, the much-debated issue of marital rape.