The court ruled that appeals under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act, 1989 must be filed under Section 14-A regardless of acquittal under the Act but conviction under IPC, clarifying legislative intent.

JUDGMENT :

MOHD. FAIZ ALAM KHAN, J.

1. Heard S/Shri Avinash Singh Vishen, Prashant Kumar Srivastava, assisted by Ankit Baranwal and Ankit Gautam, S.M. Singh Royekwar, assisted by Sumeet Tahilramani and Eshan Kumar Gupta, Ms. Saumya Singh, Vaibhav Srivastava, Saksham Agarwal against the Reference and S/Shri I.B. Singh assisted by Nischal Verma, Nadeem Murtaza assisted by Shubham Tripathi, Harsh Vardhan Kediya, Wali Nawaz Khan and Ms. Snigdha Singh, Ishan Baghel, Vikas Vikram Singh assisted by Shri Naved Ali, Yash Bhardwaj, Rajat Gangwar, Anand Kumar, Vivek Bhushan Gupta, Saurabh Upadhyay, Skand Bajpai Ms. Swati Singh, Abhinav Srivastava and Mayuresh Srivastava, as well as Dr. V.K. Singh, learned Government Advocate assisted by Anurag Varma, AGA-I, G.D. Bhatt, AGA-I, Pawan Kumar Mishra, AGA, Ajit Singh and Ms. Rani Singh, Brief Holders, Anupam Mehrotra, Aishvarya Mathur, Shreshth Srivastava, Sandeep Yadav, Ashutosh Kumar Shukla and Ayusth Tandon in support of the Reference.

2. The judgment/order of reference dated 09.08.2024 has been passed by the learned Single Judge of this Court while dealing with the afore- placed criminal appeals, taking a divergent view from the one expressed by the Division Bench of this Court in Criminal Appeal No. 3603 of 2019 ( Teja Vs. State of U.P. and another ) wherein the Division Bench of this Court has held that where a person has been acquitted of the offences under the provisions of The Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Act of 1989’) but convicted under the provisions of The Indian Penal Code, 1860 (hereinafter referred to as the ‘IPC’) then an appeal shall lie under The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (hereinafter referred to as the ‘CrPC’) and not under the Act of 1989.

3. The learned Single Judge is of the view that even if an accused person has been acquitted of the offences under the Act of 1989, the appeal shall lie under Section 14 -A of the Act of 1989 and also of the view that the correctness of the Division Bench order in the case of Teja Vs. State of U.P. and another (supra) needs to be considered by a Larger Bench of this Court and, thus, framed the following questions for consideration by a Larger Bench:-

“(I) What would be the remedy available to a person who may have been acquitted of the offences under the provisions of the Act, 1989 but convicted for offences under the provisions of IPC i.e. whether to file an appeal under the provisions of the Code or an appeal under the provisions of Section 14A(1) of the Act, 1989 when the judgment is by a Special Court or an Exclusive Special Court?

And (II) Whether the Division Bench in it’s order in the case of Teja (supra) has correctly held that in case a person has been acquitted of the charges of offences under the Act, 1989 then he can file an appeal under the provisions of the Code even though when the judgment is of the Special Court or an Exclusive Court?

4. Hon’ble Chief Justice vide order dated 20.08.2024 constituted this Larger Bench for considering the above questions framed by the learned Single Judge.

5. Before we deal with the questions, which have been referred for our consideration, it would be relevant to make a brief reference to the background facts, in furtherance of which reference has been made by the learned Single Judge in Criminal Appeal No. 2174 of 2024 ( Shailendra Yadav @ Salu Vs. State of U.P. ) and Criminal Appeal No. 2179 of 2024 Abhisek @ Abhishek Yadav @ Putan vs State of U.P.

6. Perusal of the record would reveal that in both the above criminal appeals the appellants were acquitted of the offences under the Act of 1989 but were convicted under the provis