- (1.) HEARD learned Counsel for the applicants and learned APP for the State. The applicants are challenging the order passed by the Judicial Magistrate, First Class, Pimpri, Pune, in Criminal Case No.3695/95 whereby the learned Magistrate was pleased to convict the accused-applicants herein for the offence punishable under Sections 33-EEC(c) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 and sentenced them to under simple imprisonment for six months and to pay a fine of Rs.2000.00 each and in default, to suffer simple imprisonment for three months. This order was confirmed by the Sessions Court. The applicants are challenging the aforesaid order.
(2.) IT is submitted by the learned Counsel appearing on behalf of the applicants that the Public Prosecutor has assured the applicants that if they pleaded guilty to the offence, they would be let off with simple sentence. He submitted that practice of plea bargaining has been deprecated by Supreme Court in number of judgments. He submitted that the trial Court, therefore, ought to have decided the case on its own merits. He relied on the judgment of the Supreme Court in the case of State of Uttar Pradesh V/s. Chandrika reported in JT 1999 (8) SC page 481. Learned APP submitted that having pleaded guilty to the said offence, it was not open for the applicants to challenge the sentence which was awarded by the trial Court. She submitted that it was not open for the applicants now to argue that the Magistrate had awarded the sentence on plea bargaining as this concept was foreign to the Indian Criminal jurisprudence and therefore, the allegation was liable to be set aside.
(3.) I have heard both the learned Counsel at length. From the perusal of the order passed by the magistrate, it can be seen that the learned Magistrate was pleased to consider the plea made by the learned counsel for the accused and on the basis of the said plea, had awarded sentence of six months and had imposed fine of Rs.2000.00. The Supreme Court in the case of Murlidhar Meghraj Loya v. State of Maharashtra reported in (1976) 3 SCC 684 in para 13 has disapproved the practice of plea bargaining or plea negotiation and compromise in criminal cases. In para 13 of the said Judgment, Supreme Court has observed as under:- "To begin with, we are free to confess to a hunch that the appellants had hastened with their pleas of guilty hopefully, induced by an informal, tripartite understanding of light sentence in lieu of nolo contendere stance. Many economic offenders resort to practices the Americans call ’plea bargaining’, ’plea negotiation’, ’trading out’ and ’compromise in criminal cases’ and the trial magistrate drowned by a docket burden nods assent to the sub rosa ante-room settlement. The businessman culprit, confronted by a sure prospect of the agony and ignominy of tenancy of a prison cell, ’trades out’ of the situation, the bargain being a plea of guilt, coupled with a promise of ’no jail’. These advance arrangements please everyone except the distant victim, the silent society. The prosecutor is relieved of the long processof proof, legal technicalities and long arguments, punctuated by revisional excursions to higher courts, the court sighs relief that its ordeal, surrounded by a crowd of papers and persons, is avoided by one case less and the accused is happy that even if legalistic battles might have held out some astrological hope of abstract acquittal in the expensive hierarchy of justice-system, he is free early in the day to pursue his old profession. It is idle to speculate on the virtue of negotiated settlements of criminal cases, as obtains in the United States but in our jurisdiction, especially in the area of dangerous economic crimes and food offences, this practice intrudes on society’s interests by opposing society’s interests by opposing society’s decision expressed through predetermined legislative fixation of minimum sentences and by subtly subverting the mandate of the law. The jurists across the Atlantic partly condemn the bad odour of purchased pleas of guilt and partly justify it philosophically as a sentence concession to a defendant who has by his plea ’aided in ensuring the prompt and certain application of correctional measures to him’: In civil cases we find compromises actually encouraged as a more satisfactory method of settling disputes between individuals than an actual trial. However, if the dispute ... finds itself in the field of criminal law, "Law Enforcement" repudiates the idea of compromise as immoral, or at best a necessary evil. The "State" can never compromise. It must "enforce the law". Therefore open methods of compromise are impossible. [Arnond: Law Enforcement â€" An attempt at Social Dissection, 42 Yale, L.J.I. 19 (1932)]"" ;