Judgment

ALAGIRISWAMI, J.: - Two of the appellants, Major Lala and Lt. Col. Khanna are Army Officers and the appellant in the 3rd appeal, Gupta is a businessman of Gauhati. All of them were put up for trial before the Special Judge appointed under the Criminal Law Amendment Act. 1952. One charge which was common to all the three of them was that between June, 1962 and January, 1963 all of them agree to commit or cause to be committed offences under Section 5 (2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, and of cheating punishable under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, and these offences been committed in pursuance of a conspiracy were punishable under Section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code read with Section 5 (2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Section 420, I.P.C. Mr. Gupta, the businessman was charged under Section 420, I.P.C., as well as Section 511 read with Section 420, I.P.C. The two Army Officers were also charged with offences under Section 420 read with Section 5 (1) (d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

2. The case was filed before the Special Judge on 28-6-1963 and the charge was framed on 13-3-65 After about 18 out of the 52 witnesses cited by the prosecution had been examined the three respondents filed petitions under Section 561-A read with Section 439 of Code of Criminal Procedure before the High Court of Assam & Nagaland on 28-3-68, 1-4-68 and 10-4-68 respectively for quashing the charges A learned Single Judge allowed these petitions on 23-5-1969 and quashed the charges and the proceedings before the learned Special Judge. He did this on three grounds:

(1) that the officer who investigated the case was not competent to do so :

(2) that the offences that were being tried were non-cognizable and the Special Judge could not have taken cognizance of them without sanction under Section 196-A of the Code of Criminal Procedure and

(3) that in view of the enormous length of time between 2-2-63, the date on which the case was registered and 1-4-68, upto which date some witnesses had been examined, the last witness having been examined on 15-11-67, it entailed undue harassment to the accused persons and the proceedings have to be quashed to prevent further harassment, abuse of the process of the court and vexation to the accused persons.

These three appeals have, therefore, been filed by the Union of India by certificate granted by the High Court.

3. We shall first of all deal with the question whether the officer who investigated into these cases was not properly authorized to do so. The officer was an Inspector of the Delhi Special Police Establishment. Under Section 5-A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, before it was amended in 1964, no officer below the rank of the Deputy Superintendent of Police could investigate into offences punishable under Sections 161, 165 and l65-A of the Indian Penal Code or under Section 5 of the Prevention of Corruption Act without the order of a Presidency Magistrate or a Magistrate of the First Class. In this case the Inspector concerned had obtained the order of the First Class Magistrate of Tezpur. The argument before the High Court, which was accepted by the learned Judge, was that as the offences of conspiracy were alleged to have been committed both at Tezpur as well as at Gauhati the investigation based on the order of the Tezpur Magistrate alone was not a proper one. In other words, the argument was that unless the Inspector had been authorized to investigate not only by the First Class Magistrate of Tezpur but also by the First Class Magistrate of Gauhati district he could not have done so. The learned Judge referred to and relied upon the decision in Chinnappa v. State of Mysore. AIR 1960 Mys 242. It was decided in that case that any First Class Magistrate appointed in a district can issue orders under Section 5-A of the Prevention of Corruption Act for investigation of a case. From this the learned Single Judge drew the conclusion that in respect of an offence said to ha