The main legal point established in the judgment is that the registration certificate of a motor vehicle does not confer ownership, and the registration certificate follows the ownership. The court emphasized that the registration certificate is not a document of title but is evidence of ownership, and it considered the provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act and various precedents to determine entitlement to possession of the vehicle.

1. Revision Petitioner in the Crl. R. P. is the accused in C. C. 266 of 1983 on the file of the Additional Judicial Magistrate of the First Class, Trivandrum. He is the respondent in Crl. M.C. 752 of 1983. The complainant in the case is the first respondent in the Crl. R. P. and the petitioner in the Crl.M.C. They will be referred to as accused and the complainant respectively in this order.

2. The complainant filed a private complaint before the Magistrate against the accused alleging that he is the owner of lorry bearing registration No. KER. 8232, that on 15-4-1983, the accused met him and negotiated the sale of the lorry, that the lorry was subject of a hire purchase agreement in regard to which an amount of Rs. 60,800/- was due, that the respondent agreed to purchase the lorry for a price of Rs. 1,25,000/- inclusive of the hire purchase dues and paid advance of Rs.10,000/- and agreed to pay the balance of Rs. 54,200/- to the complainant in three months. It was further alleged that on 25-8-1983 at 8 p. m., accused met the complainant at his house and wanted to take the lorry out for the purpose of testing and accordingly the complainant allowed the accused to take away the lorry but the accused did not return the lorry and refused to return the same. An application was made for the issue of a search warrant and warrant was issued and the lorry was seized by the police from the custody of the accused. Thereupon, the accused filed Crl M. P. 2162 of 1983 for release of the lorry to him on bond, evidently under S.451 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The application was opposed by the complainant on the basis that he, as the person in whose name the registration certificate stands, is entitled to custody and the accused who has no right with reference to the lorry, is not entitled to interim custody. The learned Magistrate passed an order directing release of the lorry to the accused on his executing a bond for Rs. one lakh with two solvent sureties in the like amount.

3. Challenging this order, the complainant filed Crl.R.P. No. 158 of 1983 in the Sessions Court, Trivandrum. It was contended before the Sessions Court that the order being interlocutory in nature, is not revisable in view of the bar under S.397(2) of the Code. The Sessions Court overruled this contention, went into the merits of the case and remanded the matter for fresh disposal in accordance with law. This order is challenged by the accused in Crl.R.P.418 of 1983. Not being certain about the jurisdiction of the Sessions Court to interfere in revision with an order of the nature passed by the Magistrate, the complainant has filed, by way of abundant caution, the Crl.M.C, under S.482 of the Code to quash the order of the Magistrate. The Crl. R P. and the M.C. have been heard together.

4. The order passed by the learned Magistrate under S.451 of the Code of Criminal Procedure was an order between the parties to the criminal case. There could, therefore, be no doubt that the order was interlocutory in nature attracting the bar under S.397 (2) of the Code and was not revisable. This position had been clarified in the two decisions of this Court namely, Vasu v. Unnikrishnan (1983 KLT. 310) and also Jacob v. Jayabarath Credit and Investment Company (1983 KLT. 721). The view taken by the Sessions Court that the order was not interlocutory in nature but of an intermediary type is clearly wrong. The Sessions Court could not have revised the order of the learned Magistrate. For this reason alone, the order of the Sessions Court in Crl. R. P. 158 of 1983 impugned in Crl. R. P. 418 of 1983 of this Court has to be set aside and I do so.

5. What survives is the challenge of the order of disposal passed by the Magistrate under S.482 of the Code in the Crl. M. C. There is no doubt that the registration certificate of the lorry stands in the name of the complainant and the lorry was found in the possession of the accused. According to the complainant, the law is that