The single judge bench of Justice Bibek Chaudhuri of the Calcutta High Court in the case of Dipak Kumar Mondal & Ors. Vs The State of West Bengal held that once a judgment is pronounced, even the High Court has no jurisdiction to entertain an application for grant of permission to compound the offence.
Brief facts:
The factual matrix of the case is that the appellants were convicted under Section 326/ 34 and Section 307/34 of the Indian Penal Code by an order dated 29th November 2019. Later on, the appeal was filed and the order passed by the learned trial court was set aside and convicted appellants under Section 324/34 of the IPC.
Contentions of the Petitioner:
The learned counsel appearing on behalf of the Petitioner submitted that while deciding on the punishment, this Court adopted a sympathetic stance towards the Petitioner because he was a teacher and any imprisonment would make him jobless. It was furthermore submitted that the Probation of Offenders Act establishes that a sentence of fine entails the risk of imprisonment if the accused does not pay the fine, thus the court may take this concept into account and issue an order keeping the appellants on probation. The Probation of Offenders Act's goal is to prevent the person it applies to from going to jail, hence this goal cannot be defeated by imposing a fine sentence that would inevitably result in imprisonment if the fine weren't paid on time.
Observations of the Court:
The Hon’ble Court observed that a clerical or arithmetical error can only be fixed after a judgment has been rendered, as is obvious from Section 362 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Even the High Court does not have the authority to consider requests for permission to compound an offence once judgement has been rendered. The High Court lacks authority under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to modify the previous judgment after it has been signed in light of the unambiguous provision of Section 362. No criminal court can review its judgment once it has been signed. In the absence of a direct statutory provision, it is an established legal principle that once a case has been finally resolved by a court, the court is functus officio and cannot consider a new petition for relief until the previous order of final disposition has been overturned or modified accordingly.
The Hon’ble Court relied upon the judgment titled Abdul Basit @ Raju & Ors. vs. Mohd. Abdul Kadir Chaudhary.
Based on these considerations, the Hon’ble Court was of the view that they do not have any power to alter the order of the sentence.
The decision of the Court:
With the above direction, the Hon’ble Court rejected the application.
Case Title: Dipak Kumar Mondal & Ors. Vs The State of West Bengal
Coram: Hon’ble Mr. Justice Bibek Chaudhuri
Citation: CRA 722 of 2019 CRAN 4 of 2022
Advocates for the Petitioners: Mr. Milon Mukherjee, Sr. Adv., Mr. Biswajit Manna, Adv
Advocates for the State: Mr. Swapan Banerjee, Adv., Mrs. Purnima Ghosh, Adv
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