Introduction

Imagine being away from your city for a few days. To ensure the safety of your valuables, you entrust a friend to take care of it until you return. However, without your knowledge, they sell your belongings and enjoy the fruits of it. There’s an intentional betrayal, where you faced a loss, and that’s a criminal breach of trust. Section 316 of BNS deals with criminal breach of trust. In layman terms, criminal breach of trust refers to dishonest conversion, misappropriation and disposal of a property by a person who has been entrusted with it. The conversion and misappropriation happening must be intentional, violative of the cause as to why they were entrusted with it (which is either implied or expressed) and for one’s personal gain.

Ingredients of Criminal breach of trust are as follows:

  1. There must be entrustment of a property where the accused has a dominion over it.
  2. Dishonest and intentional (mens rea) misappropriation, conversion or disposal of the property for personal gains. Mere errors or unintentional mistakes happening while handling the property does not constitute criminal misappropriation.
  3. The misuse must be violative of the legal conditions, statutory terms, and contractual obligation.

Section 316 also describes penalties for criminal breach of trust in the following ways.

  1. Anyone committing criminal breach of trust shall be imprisoned up to five years, or fine, or both.
  2. Committing a breach of trust while being entrusted with carrier, wharfinger or warehouse-keeper, shall be punishable with imprisonment up to seven years along with a fine.
  3. A clerk or a servant committing a breach of trust while being entrusted with a property shall be imprisoned up to seven years and a fine.
  4. A public servant, or a person in course of his business such as a banker, merchant, factor, broker, attorney or an agent committing a breach of trust shall face life imprisonment or imprisonment up to ten years, along with a fine.

Criminal breach of trust is no mere breach of trust, rather it’s a breach of boundaries placed by law.