CBI vs. Dr. R.R. Kishore (2023 INSC 817)
Background
After the CBI trapped Dr. R.R. Kishore (a government doctor) allegedly accepting a bribe in 2004, he sought discharge on the ground that the CBI's investigation into a Joint-Secretary-level officer required prior Central Government approval under Section 6A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act: approval that was never obtained. The Delhi High Court agreed and put the case on hold pending re-investigation with proper sanction. While the CBI's appeal against this was pending in the Supreme Court, a separate Constitution Bench in Subramanian Swamy vs. Director, CBI (2014) struck down Section 6A(1) itself as unconstitutional for violating Article 14 (equality), because it unfairly shielded senior officers from investigation without similar protection for junior ones. This left open a crucial follow-up question, since Section 6A was now void, could investigations conducted without the (now-invalid) sanction requirement be treated as always having been valid, or only from 2014 onward, which is why this fresh five-judge Bench was constituted.
Decision Breakdown
The Court first held that Section 6A was a procedural safeguard (governing when/how an investigation could begin), not something that created or altered an offense, punishment, or conviction, so Article 20(1) of the Constitution (the bar on retrospective criminal laws) had no bearing on the question at all, since that Article only protects against retrospective conviction or sentence, not procedural changes. Turning to the central question, the Court held that once a law is declared unconstitutional as violating a fundamental right (Part III of the Constitution), Article 13(2) makes it void ab initio ("still born," non-existent from the moment it was enacted) unless the Court itself expressly invokes the doctrine of "prospective overruling" to protect past transactions (which the 2014 Subramanian Swamy judgment had not done here). Therefore, Section 6A of the DSPE Act was held never to have been validly in force from the date of its insertion (11 September 2003), meaning investigations conducted without the sanction it required were not vitiated for that reason. Having only been asked to resolve this legal question, the Constitution Bench expressly declined to decide the individual merits of Dr. Kishore's case and directed that it be sent back to a regular bench for hearing and disposal.
Lesson Learnt
When a court strikes down a law as violating fundamental rights, that law is treated as if it never legally existed from the day it was passed, not just from the day it was struck down, unless the court specifically limits its ruling to operate only going forward; this "void ab initio" principle can retroactively validate or invalidate actions taken while the now-defunct law was still on the books.