NARAYANI AMMA KAMALADEVI Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This case raises the question whether a criminal conviction can be revised after the death of the convicted person where the sentence imposed is one of imprisonment only and there is no sentence of fine. No decision having a direct bearing has been brought to my notice and the question has to be decided on first principles.

(2.) The accused in this case, a cashier of the State Bank of India, Trivandrum, was convicted of the theft of a bundle (or a section as it has been called in the evidence) 'of 100 hundred rupee notes from the money in the charge of a fellow cashier (who has been examined as Pw. 4) and was sentenced to suffer rigorous imprisonment for one year. The alleged theft was on 12-11-1957 and a Fiat car bought by the accused for Rs. 7,000/- and odd within a month thereafter in the name of Pw. 17 was seized by the police from the possession of the accused in the course of the investigation, apparently on the footing that it had been bought with the stolen money. This car was subsequently sold by the court and, in convicting the accused, the court directed that the sale proceeds of the car amounting to Rs. 8,000/- and odd be appropriated towards the amount stolen by the accused and be handed over to Pw. 1, the head cashier of the Bank, lor the purpose. The accused appealed to the Court of Session, Trivandrum, but his appeal was dismissed. This was on 13-8-1959 and, on the same day, a few hours after judgment was pronounced, the accused died. It is on a petition presented by his legal representatives on 11-11-1959 that the present revision has been entertained.

(3.) In opposing the revision on the ground that no revision lay, the learned Advocate General appearing for the State put forward the broad proposition that the common law rule is that all criminal proceedings, whether against or in vindication of an accused person, must die with his death, and that, except to the extent that special provision is made by statute, as, for example, by S. 431 of the Criminal Procedure Code, this rule must apply. The general scheme of the Code is that criminal proceedings must be conducted in the presence of tbe accused person, and there are special provisions made as in Sections 205, 366 (2) and for the conduct of proceedings in his absence. S. 431 itself affirms the general principle that all criminal proceedings abate with the death of the accused, and it makes an exception only in the case of an appeal from a sentence of fine. Even if this exception embodied in Section 431 were to be applied, as has been done in some cases, to a case of revision, although there is no provision in the Code making it applicable, no revision can lie in the present case because there is no sentence of fine,