IMPORTANT POINTS
1. Magistrate need not pass speaking order while issuing summons under Section 204 Cr.P.C.
2. Long lapse of time since intiation of complaint alone cannot be a good reason to absolve accused from trial.

JUDGMENT

Thomas, J.-River "Gomati" is a tributary of Ganga. It is a bane that almost all rivers in India are now saturated with pollutants and the holy river is not spared from that malady. What causes greater concern to those for whom rivers flowed sanctified waters, and to those, for whom rivers supplied potable water, is the frightening gallop of pollution level in recent decades. The measures evolved by the Parliament to control the escalating poisoning of our streams have not yielded the desired results due to a variety of causes. The present is a case in which the trade effluents discharged by an industrial unit of a premier liquor processing company made the water in Gomati more polluted to impermissible levels. So that State Pollution Control Board (`the Board for short) initiated proceedings for prosecuting M/s. Mohan Meakins Limited and its Directors way back in 1983. Alas, the canoe remains at the starting point itself in spite of lapse of long seventeen years till now.

2. Though the trial Court issued process against the accused at the first instance, they desired the trial Court to discharge them without even making their first appearance in the court. When the attempt made for that purpose failed they moved for exemption from appearance in the court. In the meanwhile the Sessions Judge, Lucknow (Shri Prahlad Narain) entertained a revision moved by the accused against the order issuing process to them and, quashed it on the erroneous ground that the magistrate did not pass "a speaking order" for issuing such summons.

3. The Chief Judicial Magistrate, (before whom the complaint was filed) thereafter passed a detailed order on 25.4.1984 and again issued process to the accused. That order was again challenged by the accused in revision before the Sessions Court and the same Sessions Judge (Shri Prahlad Narain) again quashed it by order dated 25.8.1984.

4. The Board moved the High Court in a revision against the said order. Though the motion was made in 1984 itself it took fifteen years for the High Court to dismiss that revision petition as per the order passed by a learned Single Judge on 27.7.1999. The special leave petition to appeal is filed in challenge of the said order. Special leave granted.

5. We may point out at the very outset that the Sessions Judge was in error for quashing the process at the first round merely on the ground that the Chief Judicial Magistrate had not passed a speaking order. In fact it was contended before the Sessions Judge, on behalf of the Board, that there is no legal requirement in Section 204 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (For short the Code ) to record reasons for issuing process. But the said contention was spurned down in the following words :

"My attention has been drawn to Section 204 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and it has been argued that no reasons for summoning an accused persons need be given. I feel that under Section 204 aforesaid, a Magistrate has to form an opinion that there was sufficient ground for proceeding and, if an opinion had to be formed judicially, the only mode of doing so is to find out express reasons for coming to the conclusions. In the impugned order, the learned Magistrate has neither specified any reasons nor has he even formed an opinion much less about there being sufficient ground for not proceeding with the case."

6. In a recent decision of the Supreme Court it has been pointed out that the legislature has stressed the need to record reasons in certain situations such as dismissal of a complaint without issuing process. There is no such legal requirement imposed on a magistrate for passing detailed order while issuing summons vide Kanti Bhadra Shah v. State of West Bengal1. The following passage will be apposite in this context :

"If there is no legal requirement that the trial Court should write an order showing the reasons for framing a charge, why should the already burdened trial Courts be further burdened with such an extra work. The tim