- (1.) O. P. Jain, J. A common question of law is involved in 3 connected revision mentioned above. The question is as to whether a person aggrieved against an order passed by a Court Subordinate to the Court of Sessions can come to this Court directly, as of right, without there being any special reasons for doing so and whether this Court cannot direct him to avail the remedy in the Court of Sessions.
(2.) THERE is some conflict of judicial opinion on this point. In AIR 1960 Al lahabad 636 State v. Smt. Rampo and others it has been held that it is the well know practice of this Court not to enter tain an application for revision unless an application for revision was filed before the Sessions Judge (or the District Magistrate) and was rejected by him. In AIR 1961 Allahabad 447 S. P. Dubey v. Narsingh Bahadur (para 5) it was observed that the normal practice is for the High Court to refuse to entertain applications in such circumstances, but there is no hard and fast rule and in suitable cases the High Court has been known to depart from this practice and to accept revisions that have not been previously considered by a Ses sions Judge. This question was considered by a Full Bench of Andhra Pradesh High Court. The decision is reported in AIR 1959 (A. P.) 311,alapati Sriramamurty and others v. State of Andhra Pradesh. The learned Counsel for the revisionists has argued that the above three cases relate to the provisions of Code of Criminal Procedure of 1898 (hereinafter called the old Code) and therefore, they are not applicable after the coming into force of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1973 (hereinafter called the new Code) with came into force on 1-4-1974.
(3.) MY own view is that under the old Code the Sessions Judge had no power to set aside the impugned order and he had to report the matter to this Court if he was of the opinion that the order requires to be set aside. Under the new Code the Ses sions Judge can himself set aside the order. Therefore, in my opinion, there is all the more reasons that the revisionists should ordinarily go to the Court of Sessions and in the absence of special reasons the revision should not be entertained by this Court as a matter of course. Filing of revisions directly before this Court not only unnecessarily increases the work of this Court, but it also causes avoidable hardship to the opposite party who may be residing at a long distance and may not be in a position to pursue the case at the seat of the High Court. One of the above revisions is from Gautam Buddh Nagar which is near Delhi and therefore, in case the revision is admitted the opposite party will be dragged to Allahabad. However, the weigh of authorities is in favour of the revisionists. After the corning into force of the new Code, I could locate only one case 1996 Cri. L. J. 172 (Bombay High Court) Tejram v. Smt. Sunanda in which it has been held that where the jurisdiction is conferred on two courts, the aggrieved party should or dinarily first approach the inferior of the two Courts unless exceptional grounds for taking the matter directly before the supe rior Court is made out. But the learned Counsel for the revisionists has brought to the notice of this Court a Division Bench authority of Bombay High Court rendered in the case of Madhavlal Narayanlal Pittie v. Chandrashekhar Chaturvedi and others, 1976 Cri. L. J. 1604 in which it has been held that the power under Section 397 Cr. P. C. has been given to both the Courts (Court of Sessions and High Court) and a party is not precluded from invoking the powers of any of them. It is left to the party concerned to avail of any of the two remedies but he cannot avail of both the remediec once he has chosen his courses. Therefore, it is clear that the Single Judge judgment of Bombay High Court in the case of Tejram v. Smt. Sunanda (supra) must give way to the Division Bench authority of the same Court. The learned Counsel for the revisionists has also cited 1976 Crl. . L. J. 1806 (Gujarat High Court) Brahmchari Satyanarayan Maharaj v. Kantilal L. Dave and others in which it has been held that an aggrieved person who invokes the revisional jurisdiction of the High Court directly without approaching the Sessions Court in the first instance cannot be refused relied on the ground that unless special circumstances are made out, his revision application cannot be entertained because he had failed to move the Sessions Court.;