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Kavitha Lankesh v. The State of Karnataka

Criminal Appeal · 2021 INSC 654Decided 21 Oct 2021
Criminal Appeal arising out of SLP (Criminal) No. 5387 of 2021
Justice A.M. Khanwilkar · Justice Dinesh Maheshwari · Justice C.T. Ravikumar

Background

Journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead outside her home in Bengaluru in 2017. Her sister, Kavitha Lankesh, lodged the FIR, and investigation revealed an alleged organised-crime syndicate behind the murder, leading police to seek and obtain prior approval to invoke the Karnataka Control of Organised Crimes Act (KCOCA) against the accused, including one Mohan Nayak.N. After the final chargesheet was filed and the trial court had taken cognizance, Mohan Nayak.N challenged the police approval and chargesheet in a writ petition, and the Karnataka High Court partly allowed his petition, quashing both the approval and the KCOCA charges against him. The complainant (Kavitha Lankesh) and the State of Karnataka appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court allowed the appeals and set aside the High Court's judgment, holding that the High Court had asked itself the wrong legal question, whether KCOCA applied to the specific accused, when the only issue at that stage was whether the Commissioner of Police's prior approval for registering an organised-crime offence was validly granted on the material available. The Court clarified that such prior approval under Section 24(1)(a) of KCOCA concerns the offence (commission of organised crime by a syndicate), not the individual offender's specific role, and that the requirement of two prior chargesheets applies only to the primary offence under Section 3(1), not to abettors or facilitators under Section 3(2)-(4). Since the writ petition was filed only after sanction and cognizance had already been granted, and since the High Court had exceeded its jurisdiction by examining chargesheet merits not before it, the Court restored the KCOCA proceedings and dismissed the writ petition, while leaving Mohan Nayak.N free to pursue other lawful remedies.

Lesson Learnt

Courts reviewing a police officer's "prior approval" to invoke an organised-crime law should examine only whether there was credible material of an organised-crime offence at that stage, not pre-judge an individual accused's guilt or substitute their own assessment for a competent court that has already taken cognizance based on a full chargesheet.

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

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