A well-oiled machine guarantees a production! It doesn’t mean just pouring oil make the machine runs weathered free! In-line meaning of such saying relates to “proper maintenance” and if it does, the machine would not crumbled down.

We have been hearing a maxim “justice delivery system” – it doesn’t mean a medium or an infrastructure under which the justice is delivered, literally it relates to a “fair and frank” opportunity of being heard given by the Courts to all the stakeholders praying for justice’s from a Court, and if that adhered without any hiccups, then it mean – justice was delivered!

So one can measure the justice delivery system of its Country’s Courts by looking at how a reasonable yet an upright opportunity of being heard was given to the parties in dispute approaching it! Otherwise, a Judgment of the Court makes one party to win against another and that is natural phenomena on the backdrop of an established procedure of Law.

Sometimes, what we see is that Courts are showing overwhelming magnanimity when it was not supposed to be! Recently an Appeal was adjudged by a division bench of the Supreme Court against the J&K High Court Order quashing an FIR on the grounds of State failed to secure prior permission from the Magistrate under Section 155 of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1972, to conduct an inquiry against an Accused who had committed offences under Prevention of Corruption [PC] Act.   

J&K High Court’s such Order literally skipped Clause 4 of Section 155 of Cr.P.C., which without any ambiguity reads as follows;

“Where a case relates to two or more offences of which at least one is cognizable, the case shall be deemed to be a cognizable case, notwithstanding that the offences are non-cognizable.”

The underlying meaning of this stanza is even an Accused is framed under just a one “Cognizable Offence” he is liable to be prosecuted by the Respondent Police completely under commission of Cognizable Offence, but not otherwise.

So the point for SC’s argument was, when PC Act was a substantive piece of “Cognizable” legislation, how come High Court ignored it? On the other end, the High Court in its Order appeared to have borrowed Section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code against which the Accused were framed-up in the FIR, batted it as non-cognizable offence. To an extent HC was right in its understanding of Section 120-B proviso, but it failed to understand its literal meaning as per the Section as well as The First Schedule – Classification of Offences. A bare reading [under the heading whether such offence was Cognizable or Non-Cognizable] enlighten us as follows;

“According as the offence which is the object of conspiracy is cognizable or non-cognizable.”

So what it makes us to understand; Section 120-B act as only catalyst and it change its colour according to the gravity of offence and the offence it comes from actual proposition of Law enacted by the Legislatures. In contra, the HC assessed the case in reverse from Section 120-B and quashed the FIR by not looking at the provisions of Law under which the Accused was framed.

From the SC Judgment copy we found that the FIR was originally registered in the year 2012 and the offence of corruption allegedly occurred in the year 2000. So what does the investigating agency doing in all these 10 years by not conducting an investigation and filing of a chargesheet in time is a matter to have had reprimanded by the Courts above. Otherwise, this case had a merit on different footing i.e. barred by limitation provided the framed punishable offences were within the permissible limits of the Law.

A 2012 dated FIR was quashed by the HC under the broad notion of Section 155 of Cr.P.C. but reinstated by the SC against Clause 4 of Section 155 of Cr.P.C. – where does the mistake lies? “Opportunity of being heard” is very important ingredient in the justice delivery system, but, the same should not be at the costs of elementary knowledge of the Law. When Law interprets on its own very clearly there is no need of admission of such cases for final adjudication but they can be rejected at the threshold [very admission] stage.           

[Faqsonlaw while at the time of publishing this editorial does not own HC’s Order copy, but this piece of note was written based on SC’s Judgment which was covered in the media.]