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Prem Chand Singh v. The State of Uttar Pradesh

Criminal Appeal · 2020 INSC 155Decided 7 Feb 2020
Criminal Appeal No. 237 of 2020
Justice Navin Sinha · Justice Krishna Murari

Background

The appellant had been given a general power of attorney by the respondent in 1985 and sold some of the respondent's land under it. The respondent filed an FIR in 1989 alleging forgery of the power of attorney, but the appellant was acquitted of that charge in 1998. Years later, in 2008, the same respondent filed a civil suit to cancel the power of attorney and also triggered registration of a second FIR making essentially the same forgery allegations (with a couple of extra sections added) regarding the same power of attorney and the same land sales. The appellant's application to be discharged from this second prosecution, on the ground that he could not be tried twice for the same offence, was rejected by the trial court and in revision.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the subject matter of both FIRs was the same general power of attorney and the same sales made under it, and that merely adding a few extra sections of the Indian Penal Code in the second FIR did not make it a genuinely different case. Since the appellant had already been acquitted of the core forgery allegation in 1998, Section 300 of the Code of Criminal Procedure barred his being tried again on the same facts. The Court also noted that the respondent's intervening civil suit to cancel the power of attorney was itself an acknowledgment that the document was genuine, undermining the new forgery claim. The second FIR and all consequent proceedings were quashed and the appeal allowed.

Lesson Learnt

A person who has been acquitted of a criminal charge cannot be prosecuted again on the same underlying facts simply by filing a fresh FIR with a few additional charges tacked on: the protection against double jeopardy looks at the substance of the allegations, not just the labels used.

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

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