JUDGMENT

VIKRAMAJIT SEN, J.

1. This appeal brings to the fore the rampant manipulation and misuse of the statutory right to appeal by an ever increasing number of convicts who take recourse to this remedy with the objective of defeating the ends of justice by obtaining orders of bail or exemption from surrender, and thereupon escape beyond the reach of the law. Jural compulsions now dictate that this species of appeals should be consciously dismissed on the ground of occasioning a gross abuse of the judicial process and an annihilation of justice. The need to punish every transgressor of the law is ubiquitously accepted in all legal persuasions throughout the ages. Kautilya’s Arthasastra opines that - “By not punishing the guilty and punishing those not deserving to be punished, by arresting those who ought not to be arrested and not arresting those who ought to be arrested; and by failing to protect subjects from thieves etc. through these causes - decline, greed and dis-affection are produced among the subjects. It is punishment alone which maintains both this world and the next.” In similar antiquity it has been observed by Plato in his celebrated treatise Laws “....not that he is