where several acts, of which one or more than one would by itself or themselves constitute an
offence, constitute, when combined, a different offence,
the offender shall not be punished with a more severe punishment than the Court which tries him
could award for anyone of such offences.]
Illustrations
(a) A gives Z fifty strokes with a stick. Here A may have committed the offence of
voluntarily causing hurt to Z by the whole beating, and also by each of the blows which
make up the whole beating. If A were liable to punishment for every blow, he might be
imprisoned for fifty years, one for each blow. But he is liable only to one punishment for
the whole beating.
(b) But if, while A is beating Z, Y interferes, and A intentionally strikes Y, here, as the blow
given to Y is no part of the act whereby A voluntarily causes hurt to Z, A is liable to one
punishment for voluntarily causing hurt to Z, and to another for the blow given to Y.
72. Punishment of person guilty of one of several offences, the judgment stating that it is
doubtful of which. In all cases in which judgment is given that a person is guilty of one of several
offences specified in the judgment, but that it is doubtful of which of these offences he is guilty, the
offender shall be punished for the offence for which the lowest punishment is provided if the same
punishment is not provided for all.
73. Solitary confinement. Whenever any person is convicted of an offence for which under this
Code the Court has power to sentence him to rigorous imprisonment, the Court may, by its sentence,
order that the offender shall be kept in solitary confinement for any portion or portions of the
imprisonment to which he is sentenced, not exceeding three months in the whole, according to the
following scale, that is to say
a time not exceeding one month if the term of imprisonment shall not exceed six months :
a time not exceeding two months if the term of imprisonment shall exceed six months and
1[shall not exceed one] year :
a time not exceeding three months if the term of imprisonment shall exceed one year.
74. Limit of solitary confinement. In executing a sentence of solitary confinement, such
confinement shall in no case exceed fourteen days at a time, with intervals between the period of
solitary confinement of not less duration than such periods, and when the imprisonment awarded shall
exceed three months, the solitary confinement shall not exceed seven days in any one month of the
whole imprisonment awarded, with intervals between the periods of solitary confinement of not less
duration than such periods.
1Subs.
by the Indian Penal Code Amdt. Act, 1882 (8 of 1882), s. 5, for ―be less than a‖.
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