Setting right a “legal error” committed by a Full Bench (comprising three judges) of the Madras High Court in 2016, another Bench of equal strength on Thursday held that judgment to be per incuriam (a verdict delivered without considering binding authority).
Justices M.M. Sundresh, V. Bharathidasan and N. Anand Venkatesh ruled that henceforth appeals against acquittal by Judicial Magistrates in private complaints, such as cheque bounce cases, should be filed only before the High Court and not the Sessions Courts.
The judges said that another Full Bench of the High Court had ruled it otherwise in 2016 because the law laid down by a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court in Damodar S. Prabhu versus Sayed Babalal in May 2010 was not brought to its notice.
In the 2010 verdict, the Supreme Court clearly held that only if a private complaint ends up in conviction, an appeal could be preferred before the Sessions Court followed by a revision in the High Court and then a special leave petition before the Supreme Court.
However, in case of acquittal, the complainant could only appeal before the High Court and then move on to the Supreme Court. In a nutshell, the apex court had said that there could be four levels of litigation in case of conviction but only three in case of acquittal.
Nevertheless, as a result of the 2016 judgment, many appeals against acquittal, pending before the Madras High Court were transferred to the jurisdictional Sessions Courts and a practice also came into vogue in the State of preferring appeals before the Sessions Courts alone.
Reversing the practice, the Bench led by Justice Sundresh said: “A court is expected to correct the error resulting in a judgment which would not have been rendered otherwise. After all, the role of the court is to render justice. When injustice is the fall out of an order of the court, then it should be rectified at once.
“It would be nothing but fair on the part of the court, which is assigned with the task of rendering justice, to share the responsibilities for a wrong order. If a litigant acts upon a judgment of the court which subsequently turns out to be incorrect/wrong, he cannot be made to suffer. After all, no court shall cause harm to an innocent litigant.
“An unfair advantage created in favour of a party by a wrong decision of a court is required to be phased out… A litigation can never partake the role of a gambling or a rolling of a dice.”
Resultantly, the Full Bench ordered that all appeals that had not attained finality, and pending before the Sessions Courts at present, should be reverted to the High Court.
