Section 224: Fire, explosion or flood causing death or grievous harm
Statutory text (Thai original)
ถ้าการกระทำความผิดดังกล่าวในมาตรา ๒๑๗ มาตรา ๒๑๘ มาตรา ๒๒๑ หรือมาตรา ๒๒๒ เป็นเหตุให้บุคคลอื่นถึงแก่ความตาย ผู้กระทำต้องระวางโทษประหารชีวิต หรือจำคุกตลอดชีวิต ถ้าเป็นเหตุให้บุคคลอื่นรับอันตรายสาหัส ผู้กระทำต้องระวางโทษประหารชีวิต จำคุกตลอดชีวิต หรือจำคุกตั้งแต่สิบปีถึงยี่สิบปี
English translation
If the commission of an offence as provided in Section 217, Section 218, Section 221, or Section 222 causes the death of another person, the offender shall be liable to the death penalty or to imprisonment for life.
If it causes grievous bodily harm to another person, the offender shall be liable to the death penalty, to imprisonment for life, or to imprisonment from ten years to twenty years.
ThaiLawOnline translation, written from the Thai original and verified
Firm annotation
Section 224 is the death-result aggravator for the public-danger offences of fire, explosion, and flood in this Chapter. It applies where such an act causes the death of another person and channels the offender into the most severe penalties in the group: the death penalty or life imprisonment. It is a result-qualified offence, so the fatal outcome must be attributable to the fire, explosion, or flood the offender caused; it operates on top of the base offences (such as Sections 217, 220, and 222) rather than as an independent starting point.
Why this matters in practice
This is among the most serious offences in the Penal Code: a death caused by fire, explosion, or flood exposes the accused to capital punishment or life imprisonment, and it is not compoundable or settleable with the victim's family. The central contested issues are causation, whether the death genuinely resulted from the defendant's act, and the mental state behind the original fire, explosion, or flood, since the outcome may aggravate an intentional public-danger offence rather than a merely negligent one. Given the stakes, immediate criminal defence advice is essential.
Cited in 8 Supreme Court decisions (1961 to 2024)
Selected citing decisions
- Decision 1121/2521 (1978)
- Decision 1412/2504 (1961)
- Decision 1239/2527 (1984)
- Decision 3741/2540 (1997)
- Decision 685/2567 (2024)
- Decision 7997/2561 (2018)
- Decision 3422/2558 (2015)
- Decision 34/2508 (1965)
This list is selected automatically, weighted towards judgments that turn on this section rather than ones that merely recite it when passing sentence. It has not yet been reviewed by the firm.
Most often cited alongside
- Section 221 6
- Section 80 5
- Section 83 5
- Section 78 5
- Section 33 4
- Section 91 4
Sections that appear in the same judgments as this one most often. The figure is the number of decisions.
Counted across the firm's corpus of 83,652 Supreme Court decisions, 1921 to 2026. The count is complete; the stated year range trims rare outliers so it describes where the citations actually sit. These figures are computed by us and are not official court statistics. How we count these, and what we measured
Frequently asked questions
What penalty applies if a fire or explosion kills someone under Section 224?
The death penalty or imprisonment for life, the heaviest penalties in the public-danger group of offences.
Does Section 224 require intent to kill?
It is a result-based aggravator attached to the fire, explosion, or flood offence. The key question is whether the death was caused by that act, and the mental state behind the underlying public-danger offence is what is assessed.
Related guides on ThaiLawOnline
Cite this section
-
Plain citation
Penal Code, s. 224 (Thailand) -
Academic citation
Penal Code (Thailand), s. 224. ThaiLawOnline, https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-224/ (accessed 20 August 2026). -
Thai citation
ป.อ. มาตรา 224 -
Permalink
https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-224/ -
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<blockquote cite="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-224/"><p>If the commission of an offence as provided in Section 217, Section 218, Section 221, or Section 222 causes the death of another person, the offender shall be liable to the death penalty or to imprisonment for life. If it causes grievous bodily harm to…</p><footer>Penal Code, s. 224 (Thailand) — <a href="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-224/">ThaiLawOnline</a></footer></blockquote>
The Thai text is authoritative. The English is an unofficial translation by ThaiLawOnline, free to reuse with attribution.