9911796707
TMI Blog1959 (1) TMI 27X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... t in respect of the total amount of ₹ 1,65,000. They were thus charged under ss. 408, 409 and 120B of the Indian Penal Code. The appellant was convicted of the offence under s. 409 read with s. 120 and sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for seven years. Against this order of conviction and sentence he preferred an appeal to the High Court of Punjab (No. 5-D of 1952). The High Court confirmed his conviction but altered the sentence imposed on him by directing that he should suffer four year's rigorous imprisonment and pay a fine of ₹ 10,000 or in default suffer rigorous imprisonment for fifteen months. The order of conviction and sentence thus passed gives rise to Criminal Appeal No. 25 of 1955 in this Court. In the second case (No. 221/2 of 1949) the appellant was charged with having committed an offence under ss. 408 and 409 of the Indian Penal Code in that he had committed criminal breach of trust in respect of an amount of ₹ 23,772-8-6. The trial magistrate ,convicted the appellant of the said offence and sentenced him to suffer rigorous imprisonment for five years. On appeal (No. 6-D of 1952) the order of conviction was confirmed but the sentence impose ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... nce of cross-examining the prosecution witnesses under the summons procedure whereas under the warrant procedure he is entitled to cross-examine the said witnesses twice, once before the framing of the charge and again after the charge is framed. The appellant concedes that the cases against him were tried according to the summons procedure by reason of s. 36 of the Act and the notification issued under it; but be contends that the relevant provisions of the Act are ultra vires and he alternatively argues that the proceedings in respect of a substantial part were continued under the summons procedure even after the Act had expired and the relevant notifications had ceased to be operative. That is how the validity of the trial and of the orders of conviction and sentence is challenged by the appellant. It would be relevant at this stage to refer to the material provisions of the Act and the relevant notifications issued under it. The Act came into force on March 29, 1949. It was passed to provide for special measures to ensure public safety and maintenance of public order. Section' 36 of the Act prescribes the procedure for the trial of specified offences; under sub-s. (1) al ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... er than the aforesaid Act of which cognisance had been taken by any magistrate in Delhi before October 1, 1950, and the trial of it according to the procedure prescribed in ch. 4 of the said Act was pending in any court immediately before the said date and had not concluded before the date of the certificate issued by the notification. Let us now mention the facts about the trial of the three cases against the appellant about which there is no dispute. , The First Information Report was filed against the appellant on June 30, 1948. The trial commenced on July 18, 1949, and it was conducted according to the procedure prescribed by ch. XX of the Code'. Some prosecution witnesses were examined and cross-examined before January 26, 1950, and the' whole of the prosecution evidence was recorded before August 14, 1951. The evidence for the defence was recorded up to November 14, 1951, and the learned magistrate pronounced his judgments in all the cases on December 22, 1951. For the appellant, Mr. Ram Lal Anand contends that s. 36(1) of the Act is ultra vires because it violates the fundamental right of equality before law guaranteed by Art. 14 of the Constitution. His argume ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ted several parts of the border State of Punjab in the wake of the partition of India. Faced with the unprecedented problem. presented by this tragedy, the Legislature thought that the dangerously disturbed areas had to be dealt with on a special footing; and on this basis it provided inter alia for the trial of the specified offences in a particular manner. That obviously is the genesis of the impugned statute. That being the position, it is impossible to hold that the classification between dangerously disturbed areas of the State on the one hand and the non_ disturbed areas on the other was not rational or that it was not based on an intelligible differentia. Then again, the object of the Act was obviously to ensure public safety and maintenance of public order; and there can be no doubt that the speedy trial of the specified offences had an intimate rational relation or nexus with the achievement of the said object. There is no doubt that the procedure prescribed for the trial of summons cases is simpler, shorter and speedier; and so, when the dangerously disturbed areas were facing the problem of unusual civil commotion and strife, the Legislature was justified in enacting the ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... st part of s. 36(1) is constitutional and valid. Then it is urged that the Act which came into force on March 29, 1949, was due to expire and did expire on August 14, 1951, and so the proceedings taken against the appellant under the summons procedure after the expiration of the temporary Act were invaid. It is argued that, in dealing with this point, it would not be permissible to invoke the provisions of s. 6 of the General Clauses Act because the said section deals with the effect of repeal of permanent statutes. This argument no doubt is well-founded. As Craies has observed, as a general rule, unless it contains some special provisions to the contrary, after a temporary Act has expired no proceedings can be taken upon it and it ceases to have any further effect (2). This principle has been accepted by this Court in Krishnan v. The State of Madras (3). The general rule in regard to a temporary statute is , observed Patanjali Sastri J., that, in the absence of special provision to the contrary, proceedings which are being taken against a person under it will ipso facto terminate as soon as the statute expires . It is true that the Legislature can and often enough does av ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... the East Punjab Public Safety Act, 1949 (Punj. 5 of 1949) and the East Punjab Safety (Amendment) Ordinance, 1951 (5 of 1951) but provided that notwithstanding such repeal any order made, notification or direction issued, appointment made or action taken under the said Act and in force immediately before the commencement of this Act shall, in so far as it is not inconsistent therewith, continue in force and be deemed to have been made, issued or taken under the corresponding provisions of this Act. It must, however, be pointed out that this Act does not continue the material provisions of the impugned Act such ass. 20 and s. 36 ; and so s. 16 cannot be invoked for the purpose of validating the continuation of the subsequent proceedings against the appellant in the cases then pending against him. Besides, it is necessary to recall that s. 36(1) of the Act prescribed the application of the summons procedure in the trial of specified offences only in dangerously disturbed areas; and so, unless it is shown that the relevant area could be treated as a dangerously disturbed area at the material time, s. 36(1) would be inapplicable. In other words, the adoption of the summons procedure ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... second part of s. 36, sub- s. (1). This certificate seeks to achieve the same result by declaring that though the State of Delhi was not a dangerously disturbed area, the offences specified in the notification would nevertheless continue to be tried according to the summons procedure. This notification is clearly not authorised by the powers conferred by the second part of s. 36, sub-s. (1). What the Provincial Government is authorised to do by the second part of s. 36(1) is to direct that in areas other than those which are dangerously disturbed all offences under the Act and any other offence under any other law should be tried according to the summons procedure. It is clear that the notification which the Provincial Government is authorised to issue in this behalf must relate to all offences under the Act and any other offence under any other law. In other words, it is the offences indicated which can be ordered to be tried under the summons procedure by the notification issued by the Provincial Government. The Provincial Government is not authorised to issue a notification in regard to the trial of any specified case or cases; and since it is clear that the notification in q ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... cannot obviously include the power to treat the same area as dangerously disturbed for persons accused of crimes committed in the past and not disturbed for others accused of the same or similar A, offences committed later. That clearly is a legislative function which is wholly outside the authority conferred on the delegate by s. 20 or s. 36(1). We must, therefore, hold that the third and the fourth notifications are invalid and as a result of the second notification the whole of the Province of Delhi ceased to be a dangerously disturbed area from October 1, 1950. This position immediately raises the question about the validity of the proceedings continued against the appellant in the three cases pending against him under the summons procedure. So long as the State of Delhi was validly notified to be a dangerously disturbed area the adoption of the summons procedure was no doubt justified and its validity Could not be impeached; but, with the cancellation of the relevant notification s. 36(1) of the Act ceased to apply and it was necessary that as from the stage at which the cases against the appellant then stood the warrant procedure should have been adopted; and since it has ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... (Scotland) Act, 1874, with which the court was dealing affected not only the procedure but also substantive rights; and so it was held that the said section was not retrospective in operation. This decision is wholly inapplicable and cannot give us any assistance in the present case. Mr. Umrigar also placed strong reliance on a decision of the Full Bench of the Punjab High Court in Ram Singh v. The Crown (3). That decision does lend support to Mr. Umrigar's contention that the continuation of the trial under the summons procedure did not introduce any infirmity and was in fact appropriate and regular. The case against Ram Singh had been sent to the Court of Session under the provisions of s. 37 (1) of the Punjab Public Safety Act, 1948 (Punj. 2 of 1948) at a time when Luahiana District was declared to be a dangerously disturbed area; before, however, the trial in the Court of Session actually commenced the District ceased to be a' dangerously disturbed area. Even so, it was held that the Sessions Judge should continue with the trial under the provisions of s. 37 (1) of the Act and not under the ordinary provisions of the Code regarding sessions trial, and should follow t ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... of procedure are inapplicable to a certain proceeding pending at the time the statute came into force, they must be regarded as textually inadmissible so far as those proceedings are concerned . We are disposed to think that this view is not sound. We do not think that the adoption of the ordinary warrant procedure was either inadmissible or inapplicable at the stage where the trial stood in the case against Ram Singh (4). It was wrong to assume that the ses- sions procedure would be inapplicable for the reason that the provisions of the Code in regard to the commitment of the case to the Court of Session had not been complied with. With respect, the learned judges failed to consider the fact that the procedure adopted in sending the case to the Court of Session under s. 37(1) of the relevant Act was valid and the only question which they had to decide was what procedure should be adopted after Ludhiana ceased to be a dangerously disturbed area. Besides, it was really not a case of retrospective operation of the procedural law; it was in fact a case where the ordinary procedure which had become inapplicable by the provisions of the temporary statute became applicable as soon as t ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... with approval the observations made in Lachmandas Kewalram Ahuja v. The State of Bombay([1952] S.C.R. 710, 731) that ,as the Act was valid in its entirety before the date of the Constitution, that part of the proceedings before the Special Judge, which, up to that date had been regulated by the special procedure cannot be questioned . Unfortunately this aspect of the matter was not properly placed before the Full Bench of the Punjab High Court in the case of Ram Singh (2). If the learned judges had proceeded to deal with the question referred to them on the basis that the initial submission of the case to the Court of Session under s. 37(1) of the Act was valid they would not have come to the conclusion that the sessions procedure was inadmissible or inapplicable to the continuation of the case after Ludhiana had ceased to be a dangerously disturbed area. That is why we think that the view taken by the Full Bench is erroneous. The position then is that as from October 1, 1950, the three cases against the appellant should have been tried according to the warrant procedure. It is clear that, at the stage where the trial stood on the material date, the whole of the prosecution ev ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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