Published on: 22 July 2023 at 10:00 IST
Court: High Court of Bombay
Citation: Samadhan Baburao Khakare V. State of Maharashtra (1995)
Honourable High Court of Bombay has held that the object of framing a charge is to enable an accused to have a clear idea of what he is being tried for and of the essential facts that he has to meet. The charge must also contain the particulars of date, time, place and person against whom the offence was committed, as are reasonably sufficient to give the accused notice of the matter with which the accused is charged.
11. The whole purpose and object of framing charges is to enable the defence to concentrate its attention on the case that he has to meet, and if the charge is framed in such a vague manner that the necessary ingredients of the offence with which the accused is convicted is not brought out in the charge then the charge is not only defective but illegal. It is no doubt that when the accused is charged with a major offence, he can be convicted of a minor offence. It is true that what is major offence and what is minor sxoffence is not defined.
The gravity of offence must depend upon the severity of the punishment that can be inflicted, but the major and the minor offences must be cognate offences which have the main ingredients in common, and a man charged with one offence which is entirely of a different nature from the offence which is proved to have been committed by him, cannot in the absence of a proper charge be convicted of that offence, merely on the ground that the facts proved constitute a minor offence.
For example, a man charged with an offence of murder cannot be convicted for forgery or misappropriation of funds, or such offences which do not constitute offences against person, the reason being that the accused had no opportunity in such a case to make defence, which may have been open to him, if he had been charged with the offence for which he is to be convicted.
Drafted By Abhijit Mishra
