JUDGMENT - DAUD S.M., J.:—This petition under Article 227 of the Constitution of India and section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 takes exception to the order passed below Ex. 1 by the Additional Sessions Judge, Ratnagiri in Criminal Revision Application No. 36 of 1986.

2. Respondent No. 1—hereinafter referred to as the “complainant”—filed a private complaint in the Court of Judicial Magistrate, First Class at Devrukh which was registered as Criminal Case No. 19 of 1984. The said complaint ascribed to the petitioners-accused commission of offences punishable under sections 417 and 420 read with 34 of the Indian Penal Code. The learned Magistrate acquitted the accused on 30-6-1986. The complainant assailed the acquittal by a revision to the Sessions Court at Ratnagiri. A doubt was expressed as to the maintainability of the revision and the A.P.P. was directed to put in an appearance so that the maintainability of the revision could be decided after a proper hearing. The A.P.P. contended that the revision did not lie and in support of this contention he relied upon section 378(4) read with section 401(4) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The learned Additional Sessions Judge relying upon the judgment of Sharad Manohar, J., in (Kokilabai w/o. Ramchandra Mahajan v. Gangadhar Shivram Mahajan another)1, reported in 1986(2) Bom.C.R. 289, overruled the objection raised by the A.P.P. The revision was held to be maintainable and the petitioners were directed to be served with notices to show cause on merits.

3. Mr. Paranjpe representing the petitioners-accused contends that the Additional Sessions Judge was in error in holding that a revision lay. In support of this submission learned Counsel relies upon the (State of Bombay v. N.G. Tayawade another)2, reported in A.I.R. 1959 Bom. 94. Mr. Rege for the complainant supports the view of the Additional Sessions Judge and says that the same is correct having regard to the decision in Kokilabai's case (supra). The decision in Kokilabai's case arose upon a charge-sheet filed by the police at the instance of Kokilabai who is described by Sharad Manohar, J., as the “original complainant”. It was the acquittal of respondent No. 1 Gangadhar which led Kokilabai to file a revision. A contention taken in the hearing before Sharad Manohar, J., was that no revision assailing an acquittal lay to the Sessions Court. Negativing this contention the learned Judge observed :—

“If the power given to the High Court under said section 395, therefore, extends to revising the order of acquittal passed by the trial Court and if the revisional power of the Sessions Court under section 397 is co-extensive with that of the High Court, it follows that the Sessions Court has as much power to entertain a revision application against the order of acquittal passed by the Judicial Magistrate in the District as is had by the High Court. My attention was not invited to any other provisions of the Code by virtue of which the Sessions Court's power is said to have been curtailed or restricted... The plea that the Sessions Court does not have power to entertain a revision application against the order of acquittal does not, to my mind, owe its legal justification to any statutory provision.”

Mr. Paranjpe submits, and, in my view rightly so, that the judgment of Sharad Manohar, J., though right in the facts of the case before him, the learned Judge has expressed the ratio in somewhat specious terms. A person at whose instance the police had filed the charge-sheet is fettered from preferring an appeal where the prosecution ends in an acquittal and this is because section 378(1) of the Code enables the right of appeal to be exercised only by the Public Prosecutor upon a direction of the State Government. Therefore such an aggrieved person or complainant has no right to prefer an appeal assailing the acquittal. But the same limitation is not imposed upon an acquittal in a case instituted upon an complaint. The compla

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