Published on: December 05, 2023 at 20:05 IST
Court: Supreme Court of India
Citation: Krishnan V. Krishnaveni (1997)
Honourable Supreme Court of India has held that the object of Section 483 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 allows the High Court to exercise its continuous superintendence over the Courts of Judicial Magistrates subordinate to it as to ensure that there is an expeditious and proper disposal of cases by such Magistrates. It further allow the High Court of the States to intervene whenever its notices that there has been failure of justice or misuse of judicial mechanism or procedure, sentence or order is not correct, then High Court must intervene to prevent the abuse of the process or miscarriage of justice or to correct irregularities/incorrectness committed by inferior criminal court in its juridical process or illegality of sentence or order.
6. Section 401 of the Code gives to every High Court the power of revision. Sub-section (1) of the said section provides that in the case of any proceeding the record of which has been called for by itself or which otherwise comes to its knowledge, the High Court may, in its discretion, exercise any of the powers conferred on a Court of Appeal by Sections 386, 389 and 391 and on a Court of Sessions by Section 307. Apart from the express power under Section 397(1), the High Court has been invested with suo motu power under Section 401 to exercise revisional power. In addition, Section 482 saves inherent powers of the High Court postulating that:
“Nothing in this Code shall be deemed to limit or affect the inherent powers of the High Court to make such orders as may be necessary to give effect to any order under this Code, or to prevent abuse of the process of any Court or otherwise to secure the ends of justice.”
Section 483 enjoins upon every High Court to so exercise its continuous superintendence over the Courts of Judicial Magistrates subordinate to it as to ensure that there is an expeditious and proper disposal of cases by such Magistrates. It is, therefore, clear that the power of the High Court of continuous supervisory jurisdiction is of paramount importance to examine the correctness, legality, or propriety of any finding, sentence or order, recorded or passed as also regularity of the proceedings of all inferior criminal courts.
Drafted By Abhijit Mishra
