- (1.) This is a petition under Article 32 of the Constitution and is presented to this Court under the following circumstances. Petitioner No. 1 before us was an Agricultural Demonstrators of the Government of Madras and was employed as an Assistant Marketing Officer in Central Provinces and Berar for the purchase and movement of blackgram and other grains on behalf of the Madras Government. He, as well as the second petitioner and 44 others are under prosecution before Shri. K. L. Pandey, a Special Magistrate of Nagpur, Madhya Pradesh, in Case No. 1 of 1949 pending before him on charges of cheating, attempt to commit cheating, criminal breach of trust and criminal conspiracy, (i.e. for offences punishable under Section 420 read with Section 120-B or 109, I.P.C., Section 409 and Section 409 read with Section 120-B, (I.P.C.), and the allegation is that by reason of the acts committed by the accused, the Government of Madras had incur an expenditure of Rs. 3,57,147-10-0 in excess of the amount due. The Special Magistrate before whom the case is now pending was appointed by the Madhya Pradesh Government under Section 14 of the Criminal Procedure Code, and as the first petitioner was a servant of the Govt. of Madras, the prosecution against him has been initiated by sanction given by the Government of Madras under Section 197 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code.
(2.) The validity of the prosecution is challenged on various grounds, and the present petition is for quashing the proceedings on the ground of their invalidity. The three main points taken before us are: 1. Section 14 of the Criminal Procedure Code, in so far as it authorises the Provincial Government to confer upon any person all or any of the powers conferred or conferrable by or under the Code on a Magistrate of the first, second or third class in respect of particular cases and thereby to constitute a special Magistrate for the trial of an individual case, violates the guarantee under Article 14 of the Constitution. 2. The sanction given under Section 197 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code for the prosecution as against the first petitioner is invalid, inasmuch as the order of the Madras Government granting the sanction does not disclose that all the facts constituting the offences to be charged were placed before the sanctioning authority; nor does the sanction state the time or place of the occurrence or the transactions involved in it, or the persons with whom the offences were committed. This contention is raised relying on the Privy Council case in - Gokuchand Dwarkadas v. the King AIR 1948 PC 82 (A). 3. Even if the sanction under Section 197(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code is valid, it is for the very Government which accords the sanction to specify also the court before which the trial is to be held under Section 197(2), and in the absence of any such specification by the said Government, the power under Section 14 of the Criminal Procedure Code of appointing a Special Magistrate for the trial of the case cannot be exercised by the Madhya Pradesh Government.
(3.) These points may now be dealt with seriatim. In support of the objection raised under Article 14 of the Constitution, reliance is placed on the decision of this Court in - 'State of West Bengal v. Anwar Ali Sarkar, AIR 1952 SC 75(D). That decision, however, applies only to a case where on the allotment of an individual case to a special court authorised to conduct the trial by a procedure substantially different from the normal procedure, discrimination arises as between persons who have committed similar offences, by one or more out of them being subjected to a procedure, which is materially different from the normal procedure and prejudicing them thereby. In the present case, the Special Magistrate under Section 14 of the Criminal Procedure Code has to try the case entirely under the normal procedure, and no discrimination of the kind contemplated by the decision in 'Anwar Ali Sarkar's case, (B)' and the other cases following it, arises here. A law vesting discretion in an authority under such circumstances cannot be said to be discriminatory as such, and is therefore not hit by Article 14 of the Constitution. There is, therefore no substance in this contention.;