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Parvez Parwaz & Anr. vs. State of Uttar Pradesh & Ors.

Criminal Appeal · 2022 INSC 877Decided 26 Aug 2022
Criminal Appeal No. 1343 of 2022
N.V. Ramana · Hima Kohli · C.T. Ravikumar

Background

Following the 2007 Gorakhpur riots, a case was registered alleging that a hate speech by an individual (then a Member of Parliament) contributed to the violence, and the matter was investigated by the UP Police's Crime Branch/CID. The complainants filed a writ petition in the Allahabad High Court seeking an independent investigation, additional charges, disciplinary action against officials, and security, but the High Court dismissed the petition, finding no error in the investigation or in the refusal to grant sanction for prosecution. The complainants appealed to the Supreme Court, but by the time of the appeal, the accused person had since become the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, and the appellants pressed only the specific legal question of who, the Governor or someone else, was empowered to grant sanction for his prosecution in that changed situation.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found that events had overtaken the case: the CD recording that formed the basis of the allegation was found by a forensic laboratory to have been tampered with and edited, and the police investigation itself had already concluded with a closure report in 2017 (with a protest petition against that closure still pending before the trial court). Because there was no live prosecution for which "sanction" was even currently required, the Court held that deciding the abstract legal question of who could grant sanction in such a scenario would now be a purely academic exercise. It therefore dismissed the appeal without ruling on the sanction question, but explicitly left that legal question open to be decided in a future case where it would actually matter.

Lesson Learnt

Courts generally decline to decide significant legal questions in the abstract once the underlying facts (here, a closed investigation and tampered evidence) have made the dispute moot: such questions are left open for a case where the answer will actually affect the outcome.

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

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