[2010] 4 MLJ A B C D E Low Kian Boon & Anor v Public Prosecutor (Heliliah FCJ) 475 If the appellant’s argument were to be adopted, the Code, during its early years, before the words ‘in furtherance of the common intention of all’ were added to s 34, really enacted that each person is liable criminally for what he does himself, as if he had done it by himself, even though others did something at the same time as he did. This actually negatives participation altogether and the amendment was needless, for the original words express all that the appellant contends that the amended section expresses. One joint transaction by several is merely resolved into separate several actions, and the actor in each answers for himself, no less and no more than if the other actors had not been there. … Instead of enacting in effect that participation as such might be ignored, which is what the argument amounts to, the amending section said that, if there was action in furtherance of a common intention, the individual came under a special liability thereby, a change altogether repugnant to the suggested view of the original section. (Emphasis added.) Really the amendment is an amendment, in any true sense of the word, only if the original object was to punish participants by making one man answerable for what another does, provided what is done is done in furtherance of a common intention, and if the amendment then defines more precisely the conditions under which this vicarious or collective liability arises. In other words, ‘a criminal act’ means that unity of criminal behavior, which results in something, for which an individual would be punishable, if it were all done by himself alone, that is, in a criminal offence. (Emphasis added.) We also found the remarks of Sir Madhavan Nair in Mahbub Shah v Emperor AIR 1945 PC 118 at p 120 instructive: F G Section 34 lays down a principle of joint liability in the doing of a criminal act. The section does not say ‘the common intentions of all’ nor does it say ‘an intention common to all’. Under the section, the essence of that liability is to be found in the existence of a common intention animating the accused leading to the doing of a criminal act in furtherance of such intention. To invoke the aid of s 34 successfully, it must be shown that the criminal act complained against was done by one of the accused persons in the furtherance of the common intention of all; if this is shown, then liability for the crime may be imposed on any one of the persons in the same manner as if the act were done by him alone. H I Barendra Kumar Ghosh and Mahbub Shah were approved and adopted by the Court of Criminal Appeal in Wong Mimi & Anor v Public Prosecutor [1972] 2 MLJ 75; [1972–1974] 1 SLR 73 and Public Prosecutor v Neoh Bean Chye & Anor [1975] 1 MLJ 3; [1972–1974] 1 SLR 213. The court disapproved of Vincent Banka, a decision of the Court of Criminal Appeal of the Straits Settlements and held that it was not incumbent on the prosecution to prove that there existed between the participants a common intention to commit the crime actually committed. For s 34 to apply it was sufficient to prove that there was in existence a common intention between all the persons who committed the criminal act and that the act which constituted the offence charged was done in furtherance of that common