MT WAHIDAN Vs. REX

JUDGEMENT

(1.) ACCORDING to the finding of the Court below the offences under Section 494 and Section 494 read with Section 109, Penal Code, of which the applicants have been convicted were committed in Hardoi district although the trial took place in the Court of a Magistrate at Shahjahanpur. At the time that the trial took place Shahjahanpur was under the jurisdiction of the High Court at Allahabad while Hardoi was within the jurisdiction of the Chief Court of Oudh. The learned Sessions Judge held that in view of Section 531, Criminal Procedure Code, the applicants not having been prejudiced by the trial having taken place in a wrong district their convictions and the sentences passed upon them ought not to be set aside on that ground. The contention of learned counsel for the applicants is that Section 531, Criminal Procedure Code, does not apply to a case in which the trial took place in a Court which had no territorial jurisdiction at all for the reason that the offence was committed outside the limits of the High Court to which such Court was subordinate. Section 531, Criminal Procedure Code, runs as follows : "No finding, sentence or order of any Criminal Court shall be set aside merely on the ground that the inquiry, trial or other proceeding in the course of which it was arrived at or passed, took place in a wrong sessions division, district, sub -division or other local area, unless it appears that such error has in fact occasioned a failure of justice."

(2.) LEARNED counsel for the applicants has not been able to cite any authority in support of his contention. He, however, refers to the case of Mt. Bhagwatia v. Emperor, AIR 1925 Patna 187 : (26 Cr LJ 49). In that case the offence had taken place outside the Province of Bihar and the Magistrate at Buxar had committed the accused persons for trial to the Court of Session at Arrah. The case was heard by a Division Bench and Bucknill, J., in the course of his judgment observes : "It is not, however, at all clear that the provisions of this section contemplate a case in which there has been an order by a Court which had no territorial jurisdiction at all; such as in a case in which jurisdiction could only properly hare been exercised by some Court outside the territorial limits of the jurisdiction of a Provincial High Court." After this, however, he goes on to say : "There is, however, nothing in the section itself which limits in any way its operation" and the question was accordingly not decided by him.

(3.) IT will, however, be observed that the case before the Patna High Court was not strictly covered by the provisions of Section 531, Criminal Procedure Code The High Court quashed the commitment order so far as it related to the accused persons whose offences appeared to have been committed outside the Province on the ground that the Sessions Court to which they had been committed for trial had no jurisdiction to try them. There is, however, a series of cases in which the interpretation to be put upon the term "local area" as used in Section 531, Criminal Procedure Code, has been considered. In the Nagpur case of Dewan Singh Maftoon v. Emperor, 161 IC 635 : (AIR 1936 Nag 55 : 37 Cr LJ 474), a Division Bench of the Nagpur Judicial Commissioner's Court expressed the view that the expression "local area" as used in Section 531, Criminal Procedure Code, is not confined to a Province but includes all local areas governed by the Code of Criminal Procedure which extended to the whole of British India as it then was. The decision was based on a number of previous decisions referred to in that judgment. A similar interpretation was put upon the term "local area" by the Rangoon High Court in the case of Ngwe Yon v. Emperor, AIR 1931 Rang 169 : (32 Cr LJ 939). The Calcutta High Court in the case of Bichitranund Dass v. Bhughut Porai, 16 Cal 667 also expressed the same view.