ORDER :

[COMMON PRAYER: Criminal Original Petitions filed under Section 482 Cr.P.C. praying to quash the impugned summons dated 30.11.2022 in Na.Ka.No.3020/2021/A1 and Na.Ka.No.1893/2021/A1 respectively issued by the 1st respondent.]

1. These Criminal Original Petitions have been filed to quash the impugned summons dated 30.11.2022, in Na.Ka.No.3020/2021/A1 and Na.Ka.No.1893/2021/A1 respectively, issued by the first respondent.

2. The learned counsel for the petitioners challenged the summons dated 30.11.2022, issued in Na.Ka.No.3020/2021/A1 and Na.Ka.No.1893/2021/A1 respectively, on the following two grounds.

(a) Section 110 Cr.P.C. can be invoked only against habitual offenders.

(b) The show cause notices does not confirm to the requirements under Section 111 Cr.P.C.

He further relied on the judgment reported in 1980 (Supp) Supreme Court Cases 649 (Gopalanachari Vs. State of Kerala) for the proposition that the personal liberty of a person cannot be put up to struggle under section 110 Cr.P.C. unless it is justified. In paragraph 6 of the judgment, it is observed as follows:

6. ................The constitutional survival of Section 110 depends on its obedience to Article 21, as this Court has expounded. Words of wide import, vague amplitude and far too generalised to be safe in the hands of the Police cannot be constitutionalised in the context of Article 21 read down to be as a fair and reasonable legislation with reverence for human rights. A glance at Section 110 that only a narrow signification can be attached to the words in clauses (a) to (g), "by habit a robber....", "by habit a receiver of stolen property....", "habitually protects or harbours thieve....", "habitually commits or attempts to commit or abets the commission of .... ", "is so desperate and dangerous as to render his being at large without security hazardous to the community". These expressions, when they become part of the preventive chapter with potential for deprivation of a man's personal freedom upto a period of three years, must be scrutinised by the court closely and anxiously. The poor are picked up or brought up, habitual witnesses swear away their freedom and courts ritualistically commit them to prison and Article 21 is for them a freedom under total eclipse in practice. Courts are guardians of human rights. The common man looks upon the trial court as the protector. The poor and the illiterate, who have hardly the capability to defend themselves, are nevertheless not 'non-persons', the trial judges must remember, This Court in Hoskot's case has laid down the law that a person in prison shall be given legal aid at the expense of the State by the court assigning counsel. In cases under Section 110 of the Code, the exercise is often an idle ritual deprived of reality although a man's liberty is at stake. We direct the trial magistrates to discharge their duties, when trying cases under Section 110, with great responsibility and whenever the counter-petitioner is a prisoner give him the facility of being defended by counsel now that Article 21 has been reinforced by Article 39A. Otherwise the order to bind over will be bad and void. We have not the slightest doubt that expressions like "by habit", "habitual", "desperate", "dangerous", "hazardous" cannot be flung in the face of a man with laxity of semantics. The Court must insist on specificity of facts and be satisfied that one swallow does not make a summer and a consistent course of conduct convincing enough to draw the rigorous inference - that by confirmed habit, which is second nature, the counter-petitioner . is sure to commit the offences mentioned if he is not kept captive. Preventive sections privative of freedom, if incautiously proved by indolent judicial processes, may do deeper injury. They will have the effect of detention of one who has not been held guilty of a crime and carry with it the judicial imprimatur, to boot. To call a man dangerous is itself dangerous; to call a man desperate