State Rep. by the Inspector of Police v. M. Murugesan & Anr. 

Date of Judgment: 15 January 2020

Composition of the Bench: Division Bench- Hon’ble Justice Mr. L. Nageswara Rao and Hon’ble Justice Mr. Hemant Gupta. The latter authored this judgement.

Facts:

The current petition arose by the way of a special leave petition under article 136 of the Indian Constitution. The state had impugned an order passed by the Madras High Court (hereinafter ‘HC’) on 24th April 2019.   

The HC had constituted a committee to put forth reforms for ensuring the reformation, rehabilitation and reintegration of convicted and accused persons. In addition the committee was tasked with recommending ways for ameliorating the quality of investigation. The same was to be done by the committee in a period of eight weeks.

Interestingly, these directions were passed in a matter pertaining to grant of bail under Section 439 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (‘CrPC’). The Supreme Court was of the opinion that the High Court committed a “grave irregularity” by retaining the file after granting the bail. The apex court opined that the jurisdiction of the HC ended the very moment the application for bail under s. 439 was decided. The learned apex court was of the opinion that the inherent powers bestowed by virtue of  s. 482 of the CrPC did not confer an unfettered and arbitrary jurisdiction on the court, nor could the court act at its whim or caprice. 

The SC, did, however adverted that in the contingency of the court having aspersions about the bona fides of an investigating officer or an investigation not being carried out at all, the Court was empowered to issue appropriate directions exercising it’s writ jurisdiction under article 226 of the Constitution. An alternative remedy would be for the aggrieved person to file a complaint under s. 200 of the CrPC. The court would then proceed as per Chapter XV of the CrPC.

Nonetheless, the statutory powers under section 482 were to be exercised sparingly with circumspection and in the rarest of the rare cases. Ergo, the SC opined that the act of the learned single judge of collating the data from state and making it a part of the order after the deciding on the question of bail application was in violation of the limited jurisdiction of the Court under section 439. The hon’ble HC’s order was thus found to be unsustainable in law and was set aside.  

The entire judgment can be accessed by clicking here.