Almost all the offences in the Indian Penal Code have been carefully defined so that they include the precise evil intent which is the essence of that particular offence. Different words which have been used in the IPC to denote mens rea are voluntarily’, ‘Corruptly’, ‘knowingly’, ‘dishonestly’, ‘Wantonly’ or ‘fraudulently’ or the like. By using these words, the Indian Penal Code gives effect to the doctrine of mens rea. One of the terms used to denote mens rea used in IPC is “reason to believe” which has been defined in section 26 of the IPC as “A person is said to have reason to believe a thing, if he has sufficient cause to believe that thing but not otherwise.” This paper tries to analyse the term “reason to believe” and draws a comparison with mens rea with the help of the decided cases.

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