( 1 ) ON March 24, 1994 the officers of the bi derate of Revenue Inteligence recovered 250 foreign marked gold biscuits weighing 29. 166 Kgs. valued at Rs. 1,34,16,360. 00 from a blue coloured Maruti Gypsy. It is claimed that the present petitioner and one Nadeem Anwar were its occupants. Both of them in their respective statements under section 108 of the Customs Act, 1962 allegedly admitted the recovery and seizure. The petitioner now seeks bail on the ground that his trial has not been concluded within aperiod of sixty days from the first date fixed for taking evidence in the case. In support, he relies upon sub section (6) of section 437 of the Code of Criminal Procedure which reads as under:

"437. (6) If, in any case triable by a Magistrate, the trial of a person accused of any non-bailable offence is not concluded within a period of sixty days from the first date fixed for taking evidence in the case, such person shall, if he is in custody during the whole of the said period be released on bail to the satisfaction of the Magistrate, unless for reasons to be recorded in writing, the Magistrate otherwise directs. "

( 2 ) ADMITTEDLY, the complaint filed against the petitioner is still at an "inquiry" stage wherein evidence before charge is being recorded. It is also not disputed that if the term "trial" is taken to include "inquiry" also then, in that case, the petitioner would be factually right in his claim that more than sixty days have already elapsed from the first date when the case was fixed for evidence.

( 3 ) THE question which thus needs to be resolved is as to whether, in terms of sub-section 6 of section 437 of the Code the term "trial" would include "inquiry" also or not. This very point arose before a Division Bench of this Court in Robert Lendi v. Collector of Customs 1987 Crl. L. J. 55 which took the view that the expression "the first date fixed for taking evidence in the case" in sub-section 6 of section 437 of the Code would mean the first date fixed for recording evidence after the accused is charge-sheeted and the prosecution is given notice of that date for recording its evidence and therefore the period of sixty days under sub-section (6) of section 437 would start from that date.

( 4 ) FACED with the Division Bench judgment referred to above, it was contended by the learned counsel for the petitioner that the view taken there in was not correct and that the term "trial" ought to have been held to include "inquiry" too and in support reference was made to a Supreme Court judgment in State of Bihar v. Ram Naresh AIR 1957 SC 389.

( 5 ) THE judgihent in the case of Ram Naresh (supra) revolved around section 494 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 and while dealing with it, the Supreme Court did hold that the said provision was wide enough to cover every kind of inquiry and trial and that the word "trial" in the section had not been used in any limited sense. Does it mean that the word "trial" wherever and whenever used in the Code of Criminal Procedure must necessarily cover inquiry as well? Surely, the said judgment does not lay down any such preposition. rather it speaks of the "well-known" distinction between inquiry and trial in the scheme of the Code. The learned counsel for the petitioner is thus not correct in saying that wherever the word- trial" is used, it must, in view of the judgment in the case of Ram Naresh, be taken to cover inquiry also. The Supreme Court itself dispels this view by. observing:

the words "tried" and "trial" appear to have no fixed or universal meaning. No doubt, in quite a number of sections in the Code to which our attention has been drawn the words "tried" and "trial" have been used in the sense, of reference to a stage after the inquiry. That meaning attaches to the words in those sections having regard to the context in which they are used. There is no reason why where these words are used in another context in the Code, they should necessarily be limit