ANADI KUMAR CHATTERJEE AND ORS. Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The four appellants were tried by a Special Tribunal constituted under the Tribunals of Criminal Jurisdiction Act, 1952, (West Bengal Act of 1952). All of them were convicted of offences under section 395 of the Indian Penal Code and were sentenced to rigorus imprisonment for 3-1/2 years each. The appellant Nitai Chandra Mitra was further convicted of two offences under section 19A read with section 19(f) of the Indian Arms Act and was sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for two years for each of the offences. Sudhir Kumar De was convicted also of an offence under section 3 of the Explosive Substances Act and sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for two years. All the sentences against Nitai Chandra Mitra and the two sentences against Sudhir Kumar De were directed to run concurrently.

(2.) The prosecution case is that on the 12th Sept., 1949, these persons along with several others committed a dacoity at the Shibpur Branch of the Imperial Bank. It is said that while some of the party stood outside others entered the Pay office where the Cashier was and at the point of revolver removed more than Rs. 5,000 in cash from the Bank. Some of them escaped in a motor car while others tried to escape on cycle or on foot. Some of them were, however, apprehended by the crowd that had gathered on hearing the sound of hand-grenades bursting and the hue and cry raised by the Bank employees. Two, namely, Nitai and Anadi are said to have been arrested' later on the same day at Kailash Basu Lane where it is said a sten gun which has been said to have been used by Nitai during the dacoity as also the gun the dacoits had seized from the Darwan of the Bank along with other things were recovered. All the accused pleaded not guilty.

(3.) It is necessary to consider first of all the contention which Mr. Gupta has raised on behalf of the appellants that the trial of the appellants was not in accordance with law. The first argument on which the learned Advocate bases this contention is that the Tribunals of Criminal Jurisdiction Act, 1952, which will be later referred to as the Act does not apply to the trial of offences which had been committed before the 30th of July, 1952, on which date the Act came into force. In the absence of anything special in the Act to indicate that it will not so apply, the contention is obviously un-acceptable as the settled law is that legislation as regards procedure is ordinarily retrospective. As Lord Manton observed in Gardner Vs. Lucas, [(1873) 3 App. cases 582]. "It is perfectly well settled that if the Legislature forms a new procedure that, instead of proceeding in this form or that, you should proceed in another and a different way clearly then bygone transactions are to be sued for and enforced according to the new form of procedure. Alteration in the form of procedure are always retrospective unless there is some good reason or other why they should not be." A series of decisions in this country including some of the decisions of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has well settled the position that the law as stated by Lord Waston above is the law in India and that in the absence of any special circumstance or indication in the Act itself procedural legislation applies to all past transactions.