Allahabad High Court: The Bench of Dinesh Kumar Singh, J., released the accused on probation by granting him the benefit of Section 4 of the Probation of Offenders Act, 1958.
The facts of the case were that the accused was booked under Sections 323, 452 and 326 IPC and was convicted by the Trial Court in this regard. Shiv Ganesh Singh, Advocate on behalf of the appellant, submitted that since the appellant was not convicted previously for any offence, the Trial Court ought to have invoked the provisions of the Probation of Offenders Act, 1958. It was further submitted that the Trial Court did neither invoke the provisions of the Act, 1958 nor the provisions of Section 360 CrPC while sentencing the accused-appellant. Neither did it give any special reason in the impugned judgment and order of conviction for not giving the benefit of provisions of Section 360 CrPC or the provisions of Act, 1958. Thus the order suffered from serious illegality being violative of provisions of Section 361 CrPC and, therefore, it cannot be sustained. Section 361 of the Code is required to be applied with or without the beneficial provisions i.e. Section 360 of the Code or provisions of the Act, 1958. It was further stated that if the Court chose not to apply either of these provisions, it was required to give special reasons for not applying the beneficial provision otherwise accused offender would be eligible for provisions of Section 360 of the Code or Section 3 or 4 of the Act, 1958. The accused-appellant had a statutory right for claiming the benefit of beneficial legislation.
The Court, in view of the facts and circumstances, held that the appeal should be dismissed by upholding the conviction of the accused-appellant. However, he was granted the benefit of Section 4 of the Act, 1958. He was released on probation. [Durgesh Chandra v. State of U.P, 2019 SCC OnLine All 2176, decided on 15-05-2019]
