The Supreme Court again expressed displeasure with an order of the Allahabad High Court which declined to suspend the fixed-term sentence without applying the settled position of law on sentence suspension.
The Court set aside the High Court’s order, observing that it had failed to properly assess the circumstances justifying the denial of sentence suspension in a fixed-term conviction, as the law was settled in Bhagwan Rama Shinde Gosai and Others v. State of Gujarat, (1999) 4 SCC 421 which stated that when a person is sentenced to a fixed period of sentence and when he files an appeal under any statutory right, suspension of sentence should be considered by the Appellate Court liberally unless there are exceptional circumstances.
“The impugned Order is one more from the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad with which we are disappointed.”, the bench comprising Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan said.
“We are once again constrained to observe that such errors creep in at the level of High Court and only because the well settled principles of law on the subject are not applied correctly. It is very important to first look into the subject-matter. Thereafter the court should look into the issue involved. In the last the court should look into the plea of the litigant and then proceed to apply the correct principles of law.”, the court added.
The bench was hearing the appeal filed by the convict, where he was convicted for the offence punishable under Sections 7 & 8 respectively of the POCSO Act, Sections 354, 354A, 323 and 504 respectively of the Indian Penal Code and Section 3(1)(10) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. The trial court sentenced him to 4 years of rigorous imprisonment, with sentences running concurrently.
An application under Section 389 of the CrPC seeking suspension of sentence was filed before the High Court but was dismissed solely on the ground that the offence was heinous, without evaluating the plea in light of the settled legal principles.
Aggrieved by this approach, the convict approached the Supreme Court.
“It is unfortunate that the High Court while passing the impugned order failed to take into consideration the well-settled principles of law governing the plea of suspension of sentence on fixed term is concerned. What the High Court did was to reiterate the entire case of the prosecution and the oral evidence which has come on record.”, the court said.
“In such circumstances, referred to above, we set aside the impugned order and remand the matter to the High Court for fresh consideration of the plea of the appellant – herein for suspension of the substantive order of sentence keeping in mind the principles of law as explained by us aforesaid. The High Court shall keep in mind that the sentence is for a fixed term, i.e. 4 years and it is only if there are any compelling circumstances on record to indicate that the release of the appellant would not be in public interest that the Court may order accordingly.”, the court added.
Accordingly, the High Court was directed to re-hear the application filed by the appellant, afresh at the earliest, and pass an appropriate order within 15 days from today.
Notably, just a few days earlier, the same bench had issued a stern order against the Allahabad High Court in a separate case, even directing the Chief Justice of the High Court to refrain from assigning criminal matters to the concerned judge who had declined to dismiss a criminal case on the flawed reasoning that a related civil suit was ineffective.
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