Mode of trial under Madras Children Act violates provisions of Article 14 of Constitution.

This is an appeal by the accused Anthony alias Bakthavasalu, a young boy aged about 15 years, who has been convicted under section 376, Indian Penal Code and directed to be detained in the Senior Certified School, Chingleput, for a period of three years, by a Court of Juveniles, Egmore, Madras.. When this appeal was admitted, our learned brother Somasundaram, J. prepared a Memorandum pointing out that under rule 7 of the Rules framed under section 44 of the Madras Children Act, the procedure laid down in the Criminal Procedure Code (Act V of 1898) for the trial of summons cases has to be observed by the Juvenile Court in the trial of all cases, whether summons or warrant cases, but that this provision did not render it clear how precisely the Juvenile Court should proceed to try an offender for an offence exclusively triable by Court of Session, such as the present offence under section 376, Indian Penal Code. The learned Judge observed that the procedure to be followed by the Juvenile Court in such a case was not clear, either from the provisions of the Madras Children Act, or from the Rules framed thereunder.

The matter has been now placed before us, along with certain additional grounds upon the same aspect urged by Mr. K. Narayanaswamy for the appellant.. Those grounds are, firstly, that the Juvenile Court was in error in exercising a jurisdiction at all in this case, because this is a contravention of section 29-B, Criminal Procedure Code; secondly, that the Juvenile Court ought not to have followed the procedure laid down for the trial of summons cases, with regard to an offence exclusively triable by the Court of Session; and, thirdly, that the mode of trial and the sentence itself under the Madras Children Act (Act IV of 1920), contravened Article 14 of the Constitution of India.

In view of the importance of these grounds, we have heard the learned Advocate-General and the learned Public Prosecutor upon these objections as well as the learned counsel for the appellant. We shall deal with this matter first, before proceeding into the merits of the conviction.

The ground of objection concerning the procedure to be followed, which is also the ground referred to in the Memorandum of Somasundaram, J. drawn up at the time of the admission of this Criminal Appeal, may be first disposed of. It has to be noted that, under section 4 (v), Criminal Procedure Code "‘summons case’ means a case relating to an offence, and not being a ‘warrant case’" and that under section 4 (w) "‘warrant case’ means a case relating to an offence punishable with death, imprisonment for life or imprisonment for a term exceeding one year". The result of this is that, as the learned Advocate-General contends, from the point of view of classification of cases for the purposes of the Criminal Procedure Code, every conceivable criminal case is either ‘a summons case’ or a ‘warrant case’ . There is no third category. The further consequence is that all cases exclusively triable by the Court of Session are ‘warrant cases’, as cases in which the offences are punishable with imprisonment for a term exceeding one year. Even an offence punishable under section 302, Indian Penal Code has thus to be technically classified as a warrant case. When we look at the scheme of the Code, we find that sections 241 to 250 (Chapter XX) relate to trial of summons cases by Magistrates. Sections 251 to 259 (Chapter XXI) relate to trial of warrant cases by Magistrates. Chapter XXII relates to summary trials. Chapter XXIII (sections 266 to 336) relates to trials before High Courts and Courts of Session. This part of the provisions of the Code concerns, according to the learned Advocate-General, a curial procedure, and not a third classification of cases. We accept this argument, which is in conformity with the definitions we have set forth earlier, and the scheme of these chapters. Consequently, the procedure laid down in the Madras Children Act (Act IV of 1920) a