In an important ruling against the raking up of procedural intricacies by convicted accused in the high courts and the Supreme Court at the time of appeal, the top court has disapproved of such attempts by the accused in a bid to escape the punishment, especially when no such procedural issue was raised during the trial.
The top court said if a convicted accused is allowed to rake up the procedural intricacies only at the time of appeal without pointing them to trial judge, the conviction so achieved by the prosecution would not be “vitiated” provided the trial court had applied the law correctly and appreciated the facts of the case properly.
If the appellate courts started allowing to rake up procedural wrangles, it was bound to “dent” the very foundation of criminal justice system and the justice eventually would become a mirage, a three-judge bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari, T.S. Thakur and Dipak Misra said in a judgment delivered on Friday and made available to media on Saturday.
The top court laid down the law on in the cross appeals filed by convicted accused and the Madhya Pradesh government in a murder case, which also had additional charges under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The main ground raised by the convicts was that the special court, which convicted them had taken cognisance of the chargesheet directly without the case being “committed” to him for “sessions trial” by a magistrate as provided under section 193 of the CrPC by examining the “prima facie” evidence prior to that.
“We come to the irresistible conclusion that the objection relating to non-compliance of section 193 of CrPc, which eventually has resulted in directly entertaining and taking cognisance by the special judge under the SC and ST Act, does not vitiate the trial,” the bench said.