Criminal Law

Principles for imposition of death sentence, surveyed in detail. Practical guidelines framed for collection/collation of mitigating circumstances. This court in Bachan Singh had warned against categorising cases.96 Rejecting the contention that standards and guidelines should be laid down, it was noted in Bachan Singh that degree of culpability cannot be measured, and aggravating and mitigating […]

It so happened that before the seven days police custody is over and before the CBI exercises the power of interrogation for full seven days which as per the order passed by the learned Special Judge was available to the CBI, the respondent-accused got himself hospitalised on 18.04.2021. On 21.04.2021, the learned Special Judge granted

Principles clarified relating to permissibility of cancellation of default bail on merits after submission of charge-sheet. Held, From the above, the law, which emerges is that mere filing of the chargesheet subsequent to a person is released on default bail under Section 167(2) Cr.P.C. cannot be a ground to cancel the bail of a person,

Principles summarized relating to duty of court after insertion of S. 313(5) which enables court to take assistance of Public Prosecutor and defence counsel.  What follows from these authorities may briefly be summarized thus: section 313, Cr. P.C. [clause (b) of sub-section 1] is a valuable safeguard in the trial process for the accused to

Normal rule is that such subsequent sentence shall run consecutively. However, court has discretion under S. 427(1) to direct that subsequent sentence shall run concurrently. Held, Section 427 provides that when a person already undergoing a sentence of imprisonment is sentenced on a subsequent conviction to imprisonment or imprisonment for life, such imprisonment or imprisonment for

Principles summarized relating to parameters for summoning of additional accused under this section. The parameters on which additional accused could be summoned in an application filed under Section 319 CrPC are well settled in the case of Hardeep Singh and Ors.’s case (supra) which are as under: “105. Power u/s 319 CrPC is a discretionary

Person on coming to know about commission of offence under POCSO Act, held, is obliged to promptly report the same to the specified authorities. Failure to do so must be regarded as a serious offence even though punishment prescribed under S. 21 is not severe. Supreme Court under parens patriae jurisdiction has duty to give

Sanction or prior approval for prosecution under MCOCA: This sanction order dated 05.11.2020 is the bone of contention in the present matter. Held, this Court has repeatedly said that when an accused is absconding and is declared as proclaimed offender, there is no question of giving him the benefit of Section 438 CrPC. What has been observed

It has been held by this Court in a catena of cases including Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra reported at (1984) 4 SCC 116, that suspicion, howsoever strong, cannot substitute proof beyond reasonable doubt. This Court has held that there is not only a grammatical but also a legal distinction between ‘may’ and

Principles clarified regarding effect of omission to frame proper charge and to put relevant circumstances to accused during their examination under S. 313 (in a murder case) and applicability of Ill. (e) of S. 213 CrPC. Held, As can be seen from the oral evidence, the post-mortem reports and examination of the doctor, Harpal Singh