RAMCHNDRA DEODUTT CHOUBEY Vs. STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an application under Section 526 Criminal Procedure Code, for transfer of Criminal Case No. 141 of 1961, pending in the Court of Shri R. S. Baipal, Magistrate, First Class, Baikunthpur.

(2.) THE only ground urged before me is that the collector, who is also the District Magistrate, is unduly interested in this case. It is said that there is a controversy Between different executive authorities as to the advisability of the prosecution. The petitioners say that they have an apprehension in their minds that the trial Magistrate, who is in a way subordinate to the District Magistrate, would be influenced by the latter.

(3.) ALL that emerges from the material placed before me is that the opinion of the Revenue Authorities is a. variance with that of the Forest Department as to the advisability of this prosecution. That can hardly be a ground for transfer. No official, howsoever high he may be and whatever his attitude may be in his executive capacity, can influence a judicial Court in the administration of jusuce. It is a fundamental concept of the independence of the judiciary of our land that a person occupying the seat of justice discharges his judicial functions without fear or favour and no one, even by virtue of his official position, can influence him in the discharge of such functions. Any apprehension to the contrary must be substantiated by facts. District Magistrates in their executive capacity have something to do with the prosecution of offenders. Merely because a Judicial Magistrate is subordinate to the District; Magistrate for certain limited purposes cannot by itself create a reasonable apprehension in the mind of the accused that he would not receive justice at the hands of the Judicial Magistrate. Otherwise, perhaps every case would have to be transferred to another district: In the discharge of his judicial functions, a Magistrate cannot bo influence:] by the presiding officer of a superior court, however high it may be.