IMPORTANT POINT
Revisional power of High Court while sitting in judgment over an order of acquittal should not be exercised unless there exists a manifest illegality or there is grave miscarriage of justice.

JUDGMENT

M.K. Mukherjee, J.-Leave granted.

2. The six appellants before us were arraigned before the Sessions Judge, Morena for rioting and the murder of Baijnath in the night between June 5 & 6, 1983. The trial Judge acquitted them of both the charges; and aggrieved thereby the respondent No. 2, who was the grandfather of the deceased, sent a registered letter to the High Court. That letter was registered as a criminal revision and notice was issued to the appellants. After hearing the parties the High Court allowed the revision petition, set aside the acquittal of the appellants and remanded the matter to the trial Court to pass a fresh judgment after hearing the parties or, if need be, to hold a retrial. The above judgment of the High Court is under challenge in this appeal.

In assailing the judgment of the High Court Mr. Lalit, the learned counsel appearing for the appellants submitted that the High Court exceeded its revisional jurisdiction under Section 401 Cr.P.C. In that it reappraised the entire evidence from its own point of view and reached inferences contrary to those of the trial Court on almost every point, which was legally impermissible. In support of his contention he relied upon the judgments of this Court in Chinnaswamy v. State of Andhra Pradesh1, Mahendra Pratap v. Sarjn Singh22, Khetra Basi v. State of Orissa3 and P.N.J. Raju v. B.P. Appadn4, wherein the scope and extent of the revisional jurisdiction of the High Court in dealing with an order of acquittal have been dealt with. In Chinnaswamy (supra) this Court held that though it was open to the High Court to set aside an order of acquittal even at the instance of the private parties the revisional jurisdiction should be exercised only in exceptional cases when there was some glaring defect in the procedure or there was a manifest error on a point of law and consequently there has been a flagrant miscarriage of justice. This Court pointed out that it was not possible to lay down the criteria for determining such exceptional cases which would cover all contingencies but indicated some cases which would justify the High Court to interfere with an order of acquittal in revision. The cases so indicated are : where the trial Court has no jurisdiction to try the case but has still acquitted the accused or where the trial Court has wrongly shut out evidence which the prosecution wished to produce or where the appeal Court has wrongly held evidence which was admitted by the trial Court as not admissible or where material evidence has been overlooked either by the trial Court or by the appeal Court or where the acquittal is based on a compounding of an offence, which is invalid under law. In the other cases referred to about this Court reiterated the principles laid down in Chinnaswamy (supra) and observed that the revisional jurisdiction when invoked by a private complainant against an order of acquittal ought not to be exercised lightly and that if could be exercised only in exceptional case where the interests of public justice required interference for the correction of a manifest illegality or the prevention of a gross miscarriage of justice.

3. Apart from the cases relied upon by Mr. Lalit, we find that in Ayodhya v. Ram Sumer Singh5, a three Judge Bench of this Court dealt with the power exercisable under Section 401 Cr. P.C. In that case the High Court, after referring to Chinnaswamy (supra), had said:

"In the instant case, we find that this is a case of non-application of mind on the part of the Court below. The probative value of the First Information Report (Ex. KA 19) has been entirely ignored. The individual testimony of the eye witnesses has not been discussed and their reliable testimony has been ignored, from which it follows that material evidence has not been considered and it has been over looked. The entire judgment is full of inconsistencies. The Court below has misquoted the evidence at some places, for example, while dealing with the copy of s