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Karan Chettri & Another v. State of Sikkim

Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 659Decided 20 May 2026
Crl.A. No.-003090-003091 - 2026
Justice B.V. Nagarathna · Justice Ujjal Bhuyan

Background

The appellants were convicted by a Sessions Court of raping a 52-year-old woman at her residence and sentenced to twelve years' rigorous imprisonment under Section 376D IPC (gang rape), along with other IPC offences. On appeal, the Sikkim High Court set aside one of the convictions but upheld the Section 376D conviction and enhanced the sentence from twelve to twenty years, noting that twelve years was below the statutory minimum punishment prescribed by law for that offence. The appellants challenged this before the Supreme Court, arguing that Section 386(b)(iii) of the CrPC bars an appellate court from enhancing a sentence in an appeal filed by the convict, so the High Court had improperly made them "worse off" in their own appeal.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the twelve-year sentence originally imposed was illegal because it was below the twenty-year minimum mandated by Section 376D IPC, and that correcting such a statutory violation is not the same as an "enhancement" barred by Section 386(b) CrPC. The Court reasoned that the bar under Section 386(b) presumes the original sentence was lawfully imposed; where a sentence is below the legal minimum, the appellate/revisional court's act of raising it to the statutory floor is a suo motu correction of a patent illegality, not a discretionary enhancement, and an accused has no vested right to the continuance of an unlawful sentence. The Court also found the High Court had validly exercised its revisional powers under Section 401 CrPC (after following natural justice) to fix this error, distinguishing this situation from a prior precedent (Sachin) that dealt with genuine enhancement of a lawful sentence. The appeals were accordingly dismissed and the twenty-year sentence upheld.

Lesson Learnt

A court cannot use the "no enhancement in the accused's own appeal" rule as a shield to keep an unlawfully lenient sentence. If a trial court hands down punishment below the legal minimum, a higher court can correct it to the statutory minimum even in an appeal filed only by the convicted person, because that is treated as fixing an error, not penalizing the appellant for appealing.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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