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Neeraj Gupta v. Pardeep Kumar Bansal

Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 660Decided 1 Jul 2026
Criminal Appeal No. ___ of 2026 (@ SLP(Crl) No. 776 of 2020), arising from Diary No. 40089/2019
Justice Sanjay Karol · Justice Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh · Justice N.V. Anjaria

Background

Following the death of the appellant's father after an altercation in 2007, a private criminal complaint was lodged and, after judicial proceedings, the Sessions Court framed murder-related charges against only one of three named respondents, discharging the other two. The complainant's revision against the discharge, along with the framed respondent's own revision, went before the Punjab & Haryana High Court, which held that under Section 244 CrPC a Magistrate must record evidence before committing even a sessions-exclusively-triable case to the Sessions Court, and remanded the matter to the Magistrate for that purpose.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held the High Court's reading of the law was wrong. Section 244 CrPC (which requires the Magistrate to hear prosecution evidence) applies only to warrant cases triable by the Magistrate, not to offences exclusively triable by the Court of Session, which are governed instead by Section 209, under which the Magistrate's role is a narrow, largely administrative "inspection hole" rather than a fresh evidentiary inquiry. Tracing the legislative history from the 1898 Code through the 1973 Code, the Court explained that Parliament had deliberately abolished the lengthy committal-inquiry procedure to avoid duplicating evidence and delaying trials. It set aside the High Court's order and directed the High Court to decide the pending revision petitions afresh, on their merits, within nine months.

Lesson Learnt

In cases triable exclusively by the Sessions Court, a Magistrate is not required to conduct a fresh evidentiary hearing before committal: the committal stage is a limited administrative screening step, not a rehearsal of the trial, so witnesses should not be made to testify twice about the same facts.

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

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