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Ms. P vs. State of Uttarakhand & Anr.

Criminal Appeal · 2022 INSC 648Decided 16 Jun 2022
Criminal Appeal No. 903 of 2022
Dinesh Maheshwari · A.S. Bopanna alongside Justice Vikram Nath · Vikram Nath

Background

After getting engaged, the appellant alleged that her fiancé called her to Delhi in February 2016, had sexual intercourse with her against her wishes over several days at his rented premises there, later demanded Rs. 25 lakh, refused to marry her, and threatened to kill her. An FIR was registered in Chamoli, Uttarakhand (where the engagement took place) for offences under Sections 376 (rape), 504 and 506 (criminal intimidation) IPC. The Sessions Judge, Chamoli, framing charges, discharged the accused of the rape charge on the ground that the alleged sexual acts occurred in Delhi, outside the Chamoli court's territorial jurisdiction, and sent the remaining offences (504, 506) to be tried separately by a Magistrate, who eventually acquitted the accused of those charges. The High Court dismissed the victim's revision petition, treating the matter (erroneously) as if it were a challenge to an acquittal, prompting this appeal to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court examined whether the rape offence (occurring in Delhi) and the intimidation/abuse offences (occurring in Chamoli) formed "one series of acts so connected together as to form the same transaction" under Section 220 CrPC, which would have allowed them to be tried together in one court despite different places of occurrence. The Court held they did not meet that test (they were separated by both time and place, without the kind of proximate continuity the law requires) so the Sessions Judge had rightly discharged the accused of the rape charge for want of territorial jurisdiction, and the offence could instead be tried by the competent court in Delhi. The Court also held that since the accused had already been validly tried and acquitted of the Sections 504/506 charges by a Magistrate with proper authority to try those offences, he could not be tried again for the same charges, that would violate the constitutional and statutory protection against double jeopardy (Article 20(2) and Section 300 CrPC), though he remained liable to be tried for the separate rape charge before the Delhi Sessions Court.

Lesson Learnt

Offences forming part of the same overall dispute are not automatically triable together in one court. They must satisfy the "same transaction" test under Section 220 CrPC, based on continuity of time and place; and once a person has been validly tried and acquitted of a specific charge, the double jeopardy protection bars retrying them on that same charge, even while a separate, properly-triable charge (like an alleged rape occurring in a different jurisdiction) can still proceed before the appropriate court.

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

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