TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2013 (2) TMI 698
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.... Pradesh at Jabalpur in a criminal revision petition filed by the appellant against the order passed by the Trial Court. The factual matrix in which the controversy arises may be summarised as under: 3. Crime No.129 of 2007 for commission of offences punishable under Sections 408, 420, 467, 468 and 471 of the IPC was registered against the appellant on 18th May, 2007, at Bheraghat Police Station. On the date of the registration of the case the offences in question were triable by a Magistrate of First Class in terms of the First Schedule of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. That position underwent a change on account of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Madhya Pradesh Amendment) Act of 2007 introduced by Madhya Pradesh Act 2 of 2008 which amended the First Schedule of the 1973 Code and among others made offences under Sections 467, 468 and 471 of the IPC triable by the Court of Sessions instead of a Magistrate of First Class. The amendment received the assent of the President on 14th February, 2008 and was published in Madhya Pradesh Gazette (Extraordinary) on 22nd February, 2008. Consequent upon the amendment aforementioned, the Judicial Magistrate, First Class appears to have comm....
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.... the date the amendment came into force, the case was exclusively triable by the Sessions Court. The High Court has affirmed that view and dismissed the revision petition filed by the appellant, hence the present appeal. 6. The Code of Criminal Procedure (Madhya Pradesh Amendment) Act, 2007 is in the following words: "An Act further to amend the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 in its application to the State of Madhya Pradesh. Be it enacted by the Madhya Pradesh Legislature in the Fifty-eighth Year of the Republic of India as follows: 1. Short title. - (1) This Act may be called the Code of Criminal Procedure (Madhya Pradesh Amendment) Act, 2007. 2. Amendment of Central Act No.2 of 1974 in its application to the State of Madhya Pradesh - The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (No. 2 of 1974) (hereinafter referred to as the Principal Act), shall in its application to the State of Madhya Pradesh, be amended in the manner hereinafter provided. 3. Amendment of Section 167 - ...... xxxx xxx xxx 4. Amendment of the First Schedule - In the First Schedule to the Principal Act, under the heading "I-Offences under the Indian Penal Code" in column 6 against section 317, 318, 326, 363,....
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....sion of this Court in Jamuna Singh and Ors. v. Bahdai Shah AIR 1964 SC 1541, clearly explains the legal position in this regard. To the same effect is the decision of this Court in Devrapally Lakshminarayana Reddy and Ors. v. Narayana Reddy and Ors. (1976) 3 SCC 252 where this Court held that a case can be said to be instituted in a Court only when the Court takes cognizance of the offence alleged therein and that cognizance can be taken in the manner set out in clauses (a) to (c) of Section 190(1) of the Cr.P.C. We may also refer to the decision of this Court in Kamlapati Trivedi v. State of West Bengal (1980) 2 SCC 91 where this Court interpreted the provisions of Section 190 Cr.P.C. and reiterated the legal position set out in the earlier decisions. 8. Applying the test judicially recognized in the above pronouncements to the case at hand, we have no hesitation in holding that no case was pending before the Magistrate against the appellant as on the date the Amendment Act came into force. That being so, the Magistrate on receipt of a charge-sheet which was tantamount to institution of a case against the appellant was duty bound to commit the case to the Sessions as three of the....
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.... there should be no difficulty in taking the view that the change in law was merely a change of forum i.e. a change of adjectival or procedural law and not of substantive law. It is a well- established proposition that such a change of law operates retrospectively and the person has to go to the new forum even if his cause of action or right of action accrued prior to the change of forum. He will have a vested right of action but not a vested right of forum. If by express words the new forum is made available only to causes of action arising after the creation of the forum, then the retrospective operation of the law is taken away. Otherwise the general rule is to make it retrospective. The expressions "arising out of an accident" occurring in sub- section (1) and "over the area in which the accident occurred", mentioned in sub-section (2) clearly show that the change of forum was meant to be operative retrospectively irrespective of the fact as to when the accident occurred. To that extent there was no difficulty in giving the answer in a simple way. But the provision of limitation of 60 days contained in sub-section (3) created an obstacle in the straight application of the well-....
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....hen was), held that Amendment Act 43 of 1993 was retrospective in operation and that clauses (b) and (bb) of sub-section (4) of Section 20 of TADA apply to the cases which were pending investigation on the date when the amendment came into force. The Court summed up the legal position with regard to the procedural law being retrospective in its operation and the right of a litigant to claim that he be tried by a particular Court, in the following words: "26. xxx xxx (i) A statute which affects substantive rights is presumed to be prospective in operation unless made retrospective, either expressly or by necessary intendment, whereas a statute which merely affects procedure, unless such a construction is textually impossible, is presumed to be retrospective in its application, should not be given an extended meaning and should be strictly confined to its clearly defined limits. (ii) Law relating to forum and limitation is procedural in nature, whereas law relating to right of action and right of appeal even though remedial is substantive in nature. (iii) Every litigant has a vested right in substantive law but no such right exists in procedural law. (iv) A procedural statute s....
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.... a vested right of forum for his trial for no such right is recognised. The High Court was, in that view of the matter, justified in interfering with the order passed by the Trial Court. 14. The questions formulated by the Full Bench of the High Court were answered in the negative holding that all cases pending in the Court of Judicial Magistrate First Class as on 22nd February, 2008 when the amendment to the First Schedule to the Cr.P.C. became operative, will remain unaffected by the said amendment and such matters as were, in the meanwhile committed to the Court of Sessions, will be sent back to the Judicial Magistrate First Class for trial in accordance with law. In coming to that conclusion the Full Bench placed reliance upon three decisions of this Court in Manujendra Dutt. v. Purnedu Prosad Roy Chowdhury & Ors. AIR 1967 SC 1419, Commissioner of Income-tax, Bangalore v. Smt. R. Sharadamma (1996) 8 SCC 388 and R. Kapilanath(Dead) through L.R. v. Krishna (2003) 1 SCC 444. The ratio of the above decisions, in our opinion, was not directly applicable to the fact situation before the Full Bench. The Full Bench of the High Court was concerned with cases where evidence had been who....
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.... subject to the exception that whatever be the procedure which was correctly adopted and proceedings concluded under the old law the same cannot be reopened for the purpose of applying the new procedure. In that case the trial of the appellant had been taken up by Special Judge, Santhal Paraganas when Section 5(3) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947 was still operative. The appellant was convicted by the Special Judge before the Amendment Act repealing Section 5(3) was promulgated. This Court held that the conviction pronounced by the Special Judge could not be termed illegal just because there was an amendment to the procedural law on 18th December 1964. The following passage is, in this regard, apposite: ".... It is therefore clear that as a general rule the amended law relating to procedure operates retrospectively. But there is another equally important principle, viz. that a statute should not be so construed as to create new disabilities or obligations or impose new duties in respect of transactions which were complete at the time the amending Act came into force--(See In re a Debtor, and In re Vernazza. The same principle is embodied in Section 6 of the General....
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....n principle. The decision rendered by the Full Bench would, therefore, stand overruled but only prospectively. We say so because the trial of the cases that were sent back from Sessions Court to the Court of Magistrate First Class under the orders of the Full Bench may also have been concluded or may be at an advanced stage. Any change of forum at this stage in such cases would cause unnecessary and avoidable hardship to the accused in those cases if they were to be committed to the Sessions for trial in the light of the amendment and the view expressed by us. 20. The principle of prospective overruling has been invoked by this Court, no matter sparingly, to avoid unnecessary hardship and anomalies. That doctrine was first invoked by this Court in I.C. Golak Nath and Ors. v. State of Punjab and Ors. AIR 1967 SC 1643 followed by the decision of this Court in Ashok Kumar Gupta and Anr. v. State of U.P. and Ors. (1997) 5 SCC 201. 21. In Baburam v. C.C. Jacob and Ors. (1999) 3 SCC 362, this Court invoked and adopted a device for avoiding reopening of settled issues, multiplicity of proceedings and avoidable litigation. The Court said: "5. The prospective declaration of law is a dev....