1998 Supreme(SC) 1017

1998(7) Supreme 447
Supreme Court of India
(From Punjab & Haryana High Court)
M.M. Punchhi CJI, K.T. Thomas & S.S. Mohammed Quadri, JJ.
Ranjit Singh -Appellant
versus
State of Punjab -Respondent
Criminal Appeal 982 of 1988
(Arising out of SLP (Crl.) No. 1596 of 1998)
Decided on 22-9-1998
Counsel for the Parties :
For the Appellant : T.S. Arunachalam, Sr. Advocate (Sudhir Walia) Advocate for Vishal Malik and M.S. Dahiya, Advocates.
For the Respondent : R.S. Sodhi and Lokesh Kumar, Advocates.

Important Point
Sessions Court cannot add a new person to the array of accused in a case pending before it at a stage prior to collecting any evidence.

Headnote:Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973-Sections 193 and 319 with Section 209-Addition of new accused-Scope of powers of Sessions Court-Sessions Court cannot add a new person to array of accused in a case pending before it at a stage prior to collecting any evidence-From stage of committal till Sessions Court reach stage indicated in Section 230 i.e. collection of evidence Court can deal with only with accused referred to in Section 209.

       Held : No doubt that with the committal order Session Court gets unfettered jurisdiction to take cognizance of the offences in­volved in the case. But the crucial question is whether such jurisdic­tion would envelop powers to summon any person as an accused other than those covered by the committal order. Section 209 says that the committal Court has to “remand the accused to custody until such commitment has been made” subject to the provisions relating to bail. The accused referred to in the section is the accused against whom the Magistrate has already issued summons or warrant under Section 204(1)(b) of the Code. The said power can be exercised in respect of any offence in warrant cases whether it is triable by a Court of Session or a Magistrate. Once the accused is before the Magistrate, in the next stage he has to supply copies of documents referred to in Section 207 if it is a case instituted on police report, and otherwise the docu­ments referred to in Section 208 of the Code. Commitment of a case to the Court of Session will be complete only on compliance with the formalities enumerated in Section 209 which includes dealing with the accused in the manner mentioned therein. (Paras 10 to 13)

       During the said stage the Court of Session can deal only with the accused who is referred to in Section 209. The accused who can appear or can be brought before a Session Court at that stage is only that accused who is referred to in Section 209. Section 227 deals with the power of the Court to decide whether that accused is to be discharged or not. If he is not discharged the Session Court is obliged to frame a charge against that accused as per Section 228 of the Code. Thereafter the plea of that accused has to be recorded as enjoined by Section 229. The stage of evidence collection commences only next. So from the stage of committal till the Session Court reaches the stage indicated in Section 230 of the Code that Court can deal with only the accused referred to in Section 209 of the Code. There is no intermediary stage till then for the Session Court to add any other person to the array of the accused. Thus, once the Session Court takes cognizance of the offence pursuant to the committal order the only other stage when the Court is empowered to add any other person to the array of the accused is after reaching evidence collection when powers under Section 319 of the Code can be invoked. We are unable to find any other power for the Session Court to permit addition of new person or persons to the array of the accused. Of course it is not necessary for the Court to wait until the entire evidence is collected for exercising the said powers. (Paras 15, 16 & 17)

       But then one more question may survive. In a situation where the Session Judge notices from the materials produced but before any evidence is taken, that any other person should also have necessarily been made an accused (without which the framing of the charge would be defective or that it might lead to miscarriage of justice) is the Session Court completely powerless to deal with such a contingency? Though such situations may arise only in extremely rare cases the Session Court is not altogether powerless to deal with such situations to prevent miscarriage of justice. It is then open to the Session Court to send a report to the High Court detailing the situation so that the High Court can in its inherent powers or revisional powers direct the committing Magistrate to rectify the committal order by issuing process to such left out accused. But we hasten to add that the said procedure need be resorted to only for rectifying or correct­ing such grave mistakes. (Paras 18 & 20)