The main legal point established in the judgment is the interpretation of 'offence punishable with death or imprisonment for life' under S.437(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure and the discretion of the Magistrate in granting bail.

1. The petitioner herein has filed a complaint before the Judicial Magistrate of the First Class, Peerumed, alleging various offences against persons named as accused in the complaint. The incidents alleged in the complaint happened during night on 22-10-1986 at Thankamani Village in Idukki District. S.395 of the Indian Penal Code is the most serious among the offences of which the Magistrate took cognizance. Pursuant to the process issued, the respondents herein (who are shown as A2 and A7 respectively in the complaint) appeared before the Magistrate. They were allowed to be released on bail despite opposition from the complainant. Hence the complainant has now filed this petition for cancellation of the bail granted to the respondents.

2. The contentions of the petitioner are mainly two. The first is that the Magistrate has no jurisdiction to grant bail in cases involving offences punishable with imprisonment for life. The second contention is that the Magistrate, even if he has jurisdiction, has acted erroneously in exercising his discretion. Counsel made a plea for reconsideration of the ratio in Satyan v. State of Kerala (1981 KLT 606).

3. The offence under S.395 of the IPC is punishable with imprisonment for life or with rigorous imprisonment for a term which may extend to 10 years. S.437(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (for short 'the Code') imposes a restriction on Magistrates in the matter of granting bail to persons accused of certain offences. If there appear reasonable grounds for believing that a person has been guilty of "an offence punishable with death or imprisonment for life" such person shall not be released on bail unless he is under the age of 16 years or is a woman or sick or infirm. The words "offence punishable with death or imprisonment for life" are not understood as confining to those offences each of which is punishable with death or imprisonment for life. Eg:- S.121, 132, 194, 302, 305, 396 of the IPC are offences punishable with "death or imprisonment for life". A single judge of this Court in Satyan v. State of Kerala (1981 KLT 606) while dealing with the question of powers of a Magistrate in granting bail, made reference to the decisions in Mohammed Eussof v. King (AIR 1926 Rangoon 51) and Tularam v. King (AIR 1927 Nagpur 53). Those decisions favoured the view that the expression "offence punishable with death or imprisonment for life" does not refer to an offence punishable only with imprisonment for life. But Janaki Amma, J. in Satyan v. State neither approved nor disapproved the aforesaid view, as the learned judge decided the said case on other grounds. Therefore it cannot be said that the learned single judge gave approval for the view that Magistrates have no jurisdiction to grant bail when the offence alleged is punishable with imprisonment for life.

4. Two opposite views prevailed on this question. One view is that the words "death or imprisonment for life" shall be interpreted conjunctively whereas the other view is that they must be understood disjunctively. The learned Judge (Doyle, J) who adopted the former view in Mohammed Eussof's case subsequently doubted the correctness of his own decision. About a year later a Full Bench of the same High Court in King Emperor v. Nga son Htwa and others (AIR 1927 Rangoon 205) consisting of Doyle, J. also overruled the dictum in Mohammed Eussof's case. Following the aforesaid decision of the Full Bench, the Nagpur High Court also changed its stand subsequently in Emperor v. Mt. Janki and another (AIR 1932 Nagpur 130). Now the weight of authorities is in favour of the view that the words in S.437(1) shall be interpreted disjunctively (Naranji Premji v. Emperor, AIR 1928 Bombay 244, Rao Harnarain Singh v. State, AIR 1958 Punjab 123; State v. Vijay Kumar, 1979 Crl. LJ 1179; Giant Meher Singh v. Emperor, AIR 1939 Calcutta 714). A similar expression "offence not punishable with death or imprisonment for life" is used in S.4 of the Probati