EMPEROR Vs. VENKATESH SADASHIV NARGUND

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application to quash a certain order passed by Mr. Cowan, First Class Magistrate, Belgaum, with reference to the trial of the petitioner pending before the said Magistrate on certain charges under the Indian Penal Code. This Court is also asked by the application either to order the committal of the petitioner for trial to some Court of Session other than that at Belgaum or to transfer the case against the petitioner from the Court of Mr. Cowan to the Court of some other Magistrate outside the district of Belgaum.

(2.) The circumstances under which the application is made are briefly these.

(3.) The petitioner, who is a pleader of the District Court at Belgaum, is being tried, jointly with others, before Mr. Cowan, on certain charges, on the strength of a sanction, granted by the District Magistrate at Belgaum, and confirmed by this Court. When, after the witnesses for the prosecution had been examined, Mr. Cowan was about to frame charges against the petitioner, the latter's pleader pointed out to the Magistrate the propriety of committing the case for trial to the Court of Sessions, because the facts and inferences to be drawn from the evidence for the prosecution made out an offence exclusively triable by that Court. Yielding to that suggestion, the Magistrate framed, on the 24 of March, certain charges, one of which was under Sec. 467 of the Indian Penal Code, and the Magistrate directed that the case should be tried by the Court of Sessions. When that order was read out, the petitioner and his pleader raised the point that the charge under Section 467 could not proceed for want of sanction under Section 195 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Regarding this procedure on the part of the petitioner as "cynical insincerity," the Magistrate then and there amended the charges and intimated his intention to try the case himself instead of committing it to the Court of Session. The petitioner's pleader thereupon objected that the Magistrate, having once framed charges and directed the case to be tried by the Court of Session, could not thereafter amend the charges and proceed with the case. That objection was overruled by the Magistrate upon the ground that the mere framing of charges with a direction that the case be tried by the Court of Session did not amount to an order of committal such as the Criminal P. C. contemplates.