MOHAMMAD GIASUDDIN Vs. STATE OF ANDHRA PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Some basic issues bearing on prescription of punishments arise for judicial investigation in this criminal appeal where leave has been limited to tailoring the sentence by appellate review to fit the gravity of the delinquency and the redemption of the deviant.

(2.) The facts leading up to the conviction may need brief narration. The appellant along with another accused, deceived several desperate unemployed young men, received various sums of Rs. 1200/- by false pretences that they would secure jobs for them through politically influential friends and other make-believe representations. The offence of cheating under S. 420, I. P. C. was made out and conviction of both the accused followed. The 1st accused (appellant before us) is a young man around 28 years old and works as a Junior Assistant in the Planning and Financial Department of the Andhra Pradesh Secretariat and the other accused is his friend who personated as a State Port Officer. Before the trial court, there was a formal, almost pharisaic, fulfilment of the presentencing provision in Section 248 (2). Cr. P. C., 1973. The opportunity contemplated in the sub-section has a penological significance of far-reaching import, which has been lost on the trial Magistrate. For he disposed of this benignant obligation by brief ritual.

(3.) Now we enter the areas of punitive treatment of criminals, assuming that the guilt has been brought home. Certain elemental factors are significant strands of criminological thought. Since the whole territory of punishment in its modern setting is virtually virgin so far as our country is concerned we may as well go into the subject in some incisive depth for the guidance of the subordinate judiciary. The subject of study takes us to our cultural heritage that there is divinity in every man which has been translated into the constitutional essence of the dignity and worth of the human person. We take the liberty of making an Indian approach and then strike a cosmic note.