PUBLIC PROSECUTOR Vs. KKKADIRI KOYA HAJEE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The accused has been acquitted in Calendar Case No. 4 of 1915 on a charge of an offence punishable under Section 420, Indian Penal Code, by the Additional District Magistrate of Malabar. A learned Judge thought it necessary to take up the case in the exercise of this Court s powers of revision. Whilst it was under the consideration of a Bench, Government instructed the Public Prosecutor to file the appeals, which are before us against the acquittals in Calendar Case No. 4 and Calendar Case No. 5, a connected case. I deal at present with the former.

(2.) A preliminary objection to the hearing of both appeals has been made that they were not legally presented and that they cannot be proceeded with, because the provisions of Section 421 of the Code of Criminal Procedure have not been complied with, inasmuch as the appeals were not duly presented to this Court and they were not perused and notice was not ordered by a judge empowered for those purposes. The facts are that the Bench above referred to issued notice to the Public Prosecutor to appear at the further hearing of the revision case and also to inform the Court whether Government intended to appeal. He-appeared and then handed in the appeals by Government now under disposal to the learned Judges, who perused them and ordered notice forthwith.

(3.) As regards presentation no special method is enjoined in the; Code of Criminal Procedure; and therefore the question is one of administrative convenience alone. So long as there is, as there-was in this case, an actual presentation to an officer of the Court, such as a Bench Clerk or to one of the Judges its members, I am not prepared to hold that the presentation was invalid. As to compliance with Section 421, accused relies on the note published at part of the weekly sittings list: "Urgent Criminal Appellate Side motions will be heard by the Bench before which the criminal work of the week is posted (and must be moved at 11 a.m.), unless an Admission Court is sitting, in which case, if the motion can be heard by a single Judge, the application must be made before the Admission Court" and argues that, as an Admission Court constituted by a single Judge was sitting on 15 March 1915, the date on which orders were passed under Section 421, that Court alone, and not the Bench of two Judges, was competent to peruse the appeals. It is a sufficient answer to this objection that under Section 13, Charter Act rules for the exercise of the High Court s appellate jurisdiction by one or more judges or by Divisional Courts can be made only by such High Court, the powers of the Chief Justice being only those conferred by Section 14 to determine which Judges shall sit alone and which in Divisional Courts. It is by reference to the rules so made that the respective powers of Judges sitting alone and of Divisional Courts must be ascertained, not by reference to the notes to the sittings list, which are merely instructions for the guidance of practitioners and parties. The rules made by this Court are contained in the Appellate Side Rules; and under Rule 1(1)(f), applications for the admission of appeals from the judgment of any Criminal Court are ordinarily to be made before a single Judge. This does not in terms, and is not intended to, deprive the Divisional Court, constituted for the disposal of criminal business, of the right to exercise its powers in special cases, such as those before us, in which convenience and the acquaintance with the circumstances, which the two learned Judges concerned had, rendered their intervention specially advisable. This objection must therefore fail.