Abdul Latif Vs. Narcotic Control Bureau, (Ezu) - Court Judgment

SooperKanoon Citationsooperkanoon.com/885813
SubjectNDPS;Criminal
CourtKolkata High Court
Decided OnMar-30-2001
Case NumberC.R.R. No. 2670 of 1994
JudgeMalay Kumar Basu, J.
Reported in2001(130)ELT409(Cal)
ActsNarcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 - Sections 21 and 29; ;Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) - Sections 167(2), 244, 245(3) and 482
AppellantAbdul Latif
RespondentNarcotic Control Bureau, (Ezu)
Appellant AdvocateS. Pal, ;S. Ganguly and ;R. Arora, Advs.
Respondent AdvocateA. Roy, ;Kallol Mandal and ;D.K. Sengupta, Advs.
Cases ReferredSantosh De and Anr. v. Archana Guha and Ors.
Excerpt:
- malay kumar basu, j.1. this revisional application under section 482 cr.p.c. has been directed against the judgment and order dated 16th november, 1994 passed by the ld. additional district & sessions judge-cum-judge, special court, murshidabad in ndps case nos. 6/90 under section 29 read with section 21 of the ndps act 1985 by this order the ld. judge rejected an application of the petitioners under section 245(3) cr.p.c. whereunder they made a prayer for quashing of the proceedings of the said case on the ground that the prosecution had failed to complete adducing of evidence within the statutory period of four years from the date on which the accused persons were arrested. the ld. judge has rejected the application of the petitioners under section 245(3) cr.p.c. on the ground that there had been no default on the part of the complainant and that discharge of the accused persons under this section is not to be taken as automatic, but it is left to the discretion of the court to be exercised judiciously. it has been found by the ld. judge that there was justifying reasons for the evidence of the prosecution having not been completely adduced within the period of four years as prescribed under the law and in view thereof the hon'ble supreme court's decision in santosh de's case reported in 1994 c.cr.l.r. (sc) 87 would not be applicable to the, facts of the present case and it would not be in the interest of justice to discharge the accused under section 245(3) cr.p.c. simply on the ground that the prosecution had failed to adduce its evidence in full within a period of four years on the date of the appearance of the accused.2. the accused persons being the present petitioners have challenged the order of the court below on the grounds as follows. the decision reported in 1994 c.cr.l.r. (sc) 87 (santosh de v. the state of w.b.) is totally inapplicable to the present case in view of the fact that in this case under reference there was some evidence before the court and thus the evidence on record left the court with the discretion to discharge or not to discharge the accused on an appreciation of the material evidence on record. but in the present case there having been no evidence at all, there is no such scope for the court to exercise any discretion either this way or that way, but it has got to face a situation where there is no alternative than to discharge the accused under sub-section 3 of section 245 of the code. secondly the provisions of section 245(3) are relating to the jurisdiction of the court and it imposes some restriction on the authority of the prosecutor in the matter of adducing evidence. under these provisions, in the event the prosecutor failed to adduce evidence before the framing of charge within a fixed time limit, viz. a period of four years from the date of appearance of the accused before the court and to satisfy the court as to why the accused should not be discharged, then unless the court extends such statutory period, it is bound under the mandate of the said section to discharge the accused. thirdly, in a case where there is more than one accused, each one of them is entitled to the benefit of the provisions of this section of the code if the requirements thereof are satisfied, non-appearance of one of the accused or even the abscondence of one of them cannot be a ground to deprive the other accused of getting the benefit of these provisions on the failure on the part of the prosecutor to procure the appearance or production of the witnesses in the court in time and consequently failing to adduce evidence due to such delayed production or appearance of some other accused cannot be used as a ground to avoid the application of this section 245(3) of the cr.p.c and the prosecution cannot take the plea that the absence of one of the accused prevented the court from proceeding with the hearing of the case in time or deterred the prosecutor from adducing evidence, inasmuch as, the prosecution has ample scope to adduce evidence against an absconding accused. because, according to the revision petitioner the whole object of this law is to prevent unnecessary harassment and hardship to an accused person and the standpoint from which the court below has interpreted the provisions of this law is opposed to the principle which underlies the same. according to the appellants, the impugned order of the ld. trial judge having suffered from such inherent infirmities is liable to be set aside and the impugned proceedings of ndps case no. 6/90 pending before court below as far as the petitioners are concerned are liable to be quashed.3. on perusal of the impugned judgment it appears that the ld. trial judge has relied upon the principle enunciated in a decision of the apex court reported in : 1995crilj2640 (santosh de and anr. v. archana guha and ors.) wherein it has been held that discharge of an accused under section 245(3) of the code is not automatic and if the magistrate is satisfied that it will not be in the interest of justice to do so, he will not discharge the accused. the court below has expressed the view that in a warrant procedure case like the present one the appearance of all the accused persons must be obtained first and when all of them have appeared before the court or the process for procuring their attendance has been exhausted, the case can be said to be ripe for the purpose of adducing of evidence by the prosecution. in his order ld. trial judge has shown how since after the inception of this complaint case the court of the chief judicial magistrate had to wait for long three and half years (the complaint was filed on 26th september, 1989 and the same was sent to the court of special judge on 19-1-1993) for procuring the appearance of all the four accused persons together and finally having failed in that behalf sent the case to the court of addl. sessions judge for trial after filing it as against one of the accused, viz., ram-pal gupta who was absconding. thus up to 19-1-1993, as the order-sheet shows, the case could not be made ripe for being transferred to the court of trial, everyday this or that accused having been absent whereas since after it was transferred to such a court till the date on which the petition under section 245(3) in question was filed, the court was prevented from commencing its trial due to either this or that reason which appear to be beyond the control of the court. thus, as has been spelt out in the impugned order, after the receipt of record by it the court experienced difficulty in securing production of the accused, md. azad, from the jail and the court had to take up the matter with the prison authorities for securing his production. after that a number of adjournments had to be allowed due to absence of the accused, abdul latif and amjad. thereafter, petition for cancellation of bail of the accused, azad, was filed by the prosecuting agency and it had to be heard and the bail of this accused had to be cancelled by passing an order. then, the matter was taken to this high court by the accused by filing a revision application being no. 1264/93 in which this high court called for the records of this case and stayed the further proceedings thereof till the 2nd september, 1994 when this court passed an order directing the court below to proceed with the trial within two months, but that could not be done due to the puja vacation intervening. on the next four dates fixed i.e. on 6-9-1994,14-9-1994,22-9-1994 and 28-9-1994 the accused abdul latif and amjad sk. were absent. on the next date i.e. on 9-11-1994 these two accused were present and filed the petition under section 245(3) cr.p.c. in question but the third accused, azad, was not produced by the jail authority. thereafter on the next date, i.e., 16-11-1994 order on the said petition under section 245(3) cr.p.c. was passed by the court below.4. thus, according to the ld. trial judge it is not a fit case for applying the provisions of section 245(3). cr.p.c. and discharging the accused thereunder, because, according to him the prosecution cannot be compelled to suffer for no fault of its own, the presence of all the accused persons having not been obtained during the relevant time and secondly the interest of justice would not be served at all by discharging the accused due to such a technical reason, and the decision of a single bench of this high court reported in the 1993 c.cr.l.r. 139 would not be applicable to the instant case as the facts are totally different.5. the sub-section (3) of section 245 cr.p.c. has been inserted in the statute book in the year 1988 by way of amendment by the state of west bengal with a view to protecting the accused from the dilatoriness of the conduct of prosecution and is somewhat analogous to section 167(2) proviso of the code which is designated to protect him from dilatory investigation. therefore, the spirit behind the provisions should not be missed. it should not be used as, panacea for any and every instance of a case where the time gap between the appearance of the accused and the completion of prosecution evidence exceeds a period of four years. it is to be scrutinised whether there has been any dilatoriness on the part of the prosecution in the matter of adducing its evidence. if a case cannot be made ready for trial due to non-appearance or non-production of an accused within the said time limit, one wonders how the prosecution can be blamed for not being able to adduce its evidence.6. it is very important to comprehend the proper implication of the expression, '...from the date of appearance of the accused'. the question is what would happen where there are more than one accused and they enter their appearance before the court on different dates, certainly, the first date on which one of them appears or, for that matter, is surrendered or produced from a different jail cannot be taken to be the date of appearance in respect of the other accused persons who were yet to appear on that date or were absconding or were in custody in a different jail in connection with any other offence. nor it can be the intention of the legislature that the case is to be split up accusedwise and order of discharge is to be passed under this section of the code severally in respect of the accused in whose case the period of four years from the date of his first appearance has been over without prosecution evidence being adduced in full. in my opinion a harmonious and sensible interpretation of the above clause occurring in section 245(3) will be that they mean the appearance of the entire set of the accused as a whole and not one of the accused individually. this means in effect that the date on which the last absentee accused entered his appearance should be taken to be the date of appearance of all the accused and the period of four years is to be reckoned from that date. in the present case, as it has been already discussed above, out of the four accused, one, namely azad, was not available during the first two years after the case was instituted on 26th september, 1989 and he surrendered before the court of chief judicial magistrate for the first time on 28th june, 1991 (vide order-sheet of the ld. cjm). therefore, even if the provisions of section 245(3) cr.p.c. are to be blindly applied to this case, regardless of other settled principles governing their application, even then that would be possible only after the expiry of four years from the said date, that is, 28th june, 1991 on which the last accused surrendered before the court for the first time and from that point of view clearly the petition filed by the accused persons for discharge under section 245(3) cr.p.c. was premature and untenable.7. but, what is more important, the principle which should govern the court in the matter of applying the provisions of section 245(3) of the code is that the relief available under this section is not to be treated as automatic as soon as it is shown that the prosecution has failed to adduce any or all of the evidence referred to under section 244 within four years of the appearance of the accused and a vital check has been provided by the legislature to the indiscriminate user of such extreme measures. this is that if the magistrate is satisfied that it will not be in the interest of justice to do so, he will not discharge the accused under this section. in this connection a verdict of a division bench of the apex court in santosh de and anr. v. archana guha and ors. reported in : 1995crilj2640 will be very much relevant. their lordships in this case came to the finding that the discharge under this section is not automatic and the nature of offence in particular along with the other relevant circumstances including the conduct of the accused would have to be taken into consideration by the court in order to form its satisfaction for the purpose of coming to a finding as to whether it will or not be in the interest of justice to discharge the accused under the provisions of the said section. in the present case the ld. court below appears to have applied this yardstick also in coming to his conclusion that it is not a fit case where an order of discharge of the accused persons under section 245(3) will be justified. the complaint appears to be with regard to an alleged offence under sections 29 read with 21 of the ndps act, 1985 which are punishable with imprisonment for not less than ten (10) years, the accused persons having allegedly manufactured or possessed huge quantity of offensive articles like heroin, charas, opium, calcium carbonate, morphin and other narcotic drugs based on alkaloids which have been recovered from their possession. it is alleged that the accused persons have been selling and exporting various narcotic drugs on interstate basis in a large scale. thus it goes without saying that the nature of the allegations against the accused persons in the instant case is extremely serious and alarming for the future of the society as a whole.8. from the foregoing discussion it becomes clear that in the first place strictly speaking, there has been no expiry of the prescribed time-limit of four years from the date of appearance of the accused as required under section 245 cr.p.c. secondly, even if for the sake of argument it is assumed for a moment that there has been a lapse of four years from the date of appearance of the accused, even then in view of the serious nature and magnitude of the offence alleged against them, it cannot but be held that the ld. trial judge was perfectly justified in holding that it would not be in the interest of justice to pass an order of discharge in favour of the accused-petitioners on such a technical ground. the alleged commission of a heinous crime imperiling the whole social fabric should not be over-shadowed by considerations of delay in trial in the matter of which the prosecution had little fault. it is not a case where dates after dates have been fixed for evidence but the prosecution failed to adduce it. on the other hand, it is a case where the complaint lodged by the narcotic bureau could not be transferred to the court of the ld. trial judge for commencing trial of the case due to the non-appearance or non-production of the accused for years together the case was not at all ripe for fixing date of trial in view of the absence of one of the accused and therefore, the question cannot arise at all for saying that the prosecution failed to adduce evidence.9. the newly added provisions of section 245(3) cr.p.c. appear to have been intended to serve as a harmonising force, to strike a balance between the rights of the accused persons to get speedy trial and the rights of the society to be indemnified against the recurrence of crimes against it. it cannot be the intention of the legislature that these provisions should be blindly applied without making an assessment as to how far it will be safe and in the interest of justice regard being had to the nature of the offence alleged to set the accused free on purely technical grounds.10. in any view of the matter, in the present case the proposed discharge of the accused persons under section 245(3) cr.p.c. will be unwarranted and unjustified and the court below did not commit any error by refusing to allow their petition under section 245(3) of the code. accordingly the impugned order is upheld and the revision application is dismissed. the ld. trial judge is hereby directed to proceed forthwith with the trial of this case if possible on day to day basis and to dispose of the same as expeditiously as possible preferably within a period of 4 (four) months from the date of communication of this judgment.11. let the lower court records be sent down to the court below at once per special messenger whose costs shall be borne by the o.p. and it shall be deposited by the 3rd april. 2001.
Judgment:

Malay Kumar Basu, J.

1. This Revisional application under Section 482 Cr.P.C. has been directed against the judgment and order dated 16th November, 1994 passed by the ld. Additional District & Sessions Judge-cum-Judge, Special Court, Murshidabad in NDPS Case Nos. 6/90 under Section 29 read with Section 21 of the NDPS Act 1985 By this order the ld. Judge rejected an application of the petitioners under Section 245(3) Cr.P.C. whereunder they made a prayer for quashing of the proceedings of the said case on the ground that the prosecution had failed to complete adducing of evidence within the statutory period of four years from the date on which the accused persons were arrested. The ld. Judge has rejected the application of the petitioners under Section 245(3) Cr.P.C. on the ground that there had been no default on the part of the complainant and that discharge of the accused persons under this Section is not to be taken as automatic, but it is left to the discretion of the Court to be exercised judiciously. It has been found by the ld. Judge that there was justifying reasons for the evidence of the prosecution having not been completely adduced within the period of four years as prescribed under the law and in view thereof the Hon'ble Supreme Court's decision in Santosh De's case reported in 1994 C.Cr.L.R. (SC) 87 would not be applicable to the, facts of the present case and it would not be in the interest of justice to discharge the accused under Section 245(3) Cr.P.C. simply on the ground that the prosecution had failed to adduce its evidence in full within a period of four years on the date of the appearance of the accused.

2. The accused persons being the present petitioners have challenged the order of the Court below on the grounds as follows. The decision reported in 1994 C.Cr.L.R. (SC) 87 (Santosh De v. The State of W.B.) is totally inapplicable to the present case in view of the fact that in this case under reference there was some evidence before the Court and thus the evidence on record left the Court with the discretion to discharge or not to discharge the accused on an appreciation of the material evidence on record. But in the present case there having been no evidence at all, there is no such scope for the Court to exercise any discretion either this way or that way, but it has got to face a situation where there is no alternative than to discharge the accused under sub-section 3 of Section 245 of the Code. Secondly the provisions of Section 245(3) are relating to the jurisdiction of the Court and it imposes some restriction on the authority of the prosecutor in the matter of adducing evidence. Under these provisions, in the event the prosecutor failed to adduce evidence before the framing of charge within a fixed time limit, viz. a period of four years from the date of appearance of the accused before the Court and to satisfy the Court as to why the accused should not be discharged, then unless the Court extends such statutory period, it is bound under the mandate of the said Section to discharge the accused. Thirdly, in a case where there is more than one accused, each one of them is entitled to the benefit of the provisions of this Section of the Code if the requirements thereof are satisfied, Non-appearance of one of the accused or even the abscondence of one of them cannot be a ground to deprive the other accused of getting the benefit of these provisions on the failure on the part of the prosecutor to procure the appearance or production of the witnesses in the Court in time and consequently failing to adduce evidence due to such delayed production or appearance of some other accused cannot be used as a ground to avoid the application of this Section 245(3) of the Cr.P.C and the prosecution cannot take the plea that the absence of one of the accused prevented the Court from proceeding with the hearing of the case in time or deterred the prosecutor from adducing evidence, inasmuch as, the prosecution has ample scope to adduce evidence against an absconding accused. Because, according to the revision petitioner the whole object of this law is to prevent unnecessary harassment and hardship to an accused person and the standpoint from which the Court below has interpreted the provisions of this law is opposed to the principle which underlies the same. According to the appellants, the impugned order of the ld. Trial Judge having suffered from such inherent infirmities is liable to be set aside and the impugned proceedings of NDPS Case No. 6/90 pending before Court below as far as the petitioners are concerned are liable to be quashed.

3. On perusal of the impugned judgment it appears that the ld. Trial Judge has relied upon the principle enunciated in a decision of the Apex Court reported in : 1995CriLJ2640 (Santosh De and Anr. v. Archana Guha and Ors.) wherein it has been held that discharge of an accused under Section 245(3) of the Code is not automatic and if the Magistrate is satisfied that it will not be in the interest of justice to do so, he will not discharge the accused. The Court below has expressed the view that in a warrant procedure case like the present one the appearance of all the accused persons must be obtained first and when all of them have appeared before the Court or the process for procuring their attendance has been exhausted, the case can be said to be ripe for the purpose of adducing of evidence by the prosecution. In his order ld. trial Judge has shown how since after the inception of this complaint case the Court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate had to wait for long three and half years (the complaint was filed on 26th September, 1989 and the same was sent to the Court of Special Judge on 19-1-1993) for procuring the appearance of all the four accused persons together and finally having failed in that behalf sent the case to the Court of Addl. Sessions Judge for trial after filing it as against one of the accused, viz., Ram-pal Gupta who was absconding. Thus up to 19-1-1993, as the order-sheet shows, the case could not be made ripe for being transferred to the Court of trial, everyday this or that accused having been absent whereas since after it was transferred to such a Court till the date on which the petition under Section 245(3) in question was filed, the Court was prevented from commencing its trial due to either this or that reason which appear to be beyond the control of the Court. Thus, as has been spelt out in the impugned order, after the receipt of record by it the Court experienced difficulty in securing production of the accused, Md. Azad, from the jail and the Court had to take up the matter with the prison authorities for securing his production. After that a number of adjournments had to be allowed due to absence of the accused, Abdul Latif and Amjad. Thereafter, petition for cancellation of bail of the accused, Azad, was filed by the prosecuting agency and it had to be heard and the bail of this accused had to be cancelled by passing an order. Then, the matter was taken to this High Court by the accused by filing a Revision Application being No. 1264/93 in which this High Court called for the records of this case and stayed the further proceedings thereof till the 2nd September, 1994 when this Court passed an order directing the Court below to proceed with the trial within two months, but that could not be done due to the Puja vacation intervening. On the next four dates fixed i.e. on 6-9-1994,14-9-1994,22-9-1994 and 28-9-1994 the accused Abdul Latif and Amjad Sk. were absent. On the next date i.e. on 9-11-1994 these two accused were present and filed the petition under Section 245(3) Cr.P.C. in question but the third accused, Azad, was not produced by the jail authority. Thereafter on the next date, i.e., 16-11-1994 order on the said petition under Section 245(3) Cr.P.C. was passed by the Court below.

4. Thus, according to the ld. Trial Judge it is not a fit case for applying the provisions of Section 245(3). Cr.P.C. and discharging the accused thereunder, because, according to him the prosecution cannot be compelled to suffer for no fault of its own, the presence of all the accused persons having not been obtained during the relevant time and secondly the interest of justice would not be served at all by discharging the accused due to such a technical reason, and the decision of a Single Bench of this High Court reported in the 1993 C.Cr.L.R. 139 would not be applicable to the instant case as the facts are totally different.

5. The Sub-section (3) of Section 245 Cr.P.C. has been inserted in the Statute Book in the year 1988 by way of amendment by the State of West Bengal with a view to protecting the accused from the dilatoriness of the conduct of prosecution and is somewhat analogous to Section 167(2) proviso of the Code which is designated to protect him from dilatory investigation. Therefore, the spirit behind the provisions should not be missed. It should not be used as, panacea for any and every instance of a case where the time gap between the appearance of the accused and the completion of prosecution evidence exceeds a period of four years. It is to be scrutinised whether there has been any dilatoriness on the part of the prosecution in the matter of adducing its evidence. If a case cannot be made ready for trial due to non-appearance or non-production of an accused within the said time limit, one wonders how the prosecution can be blamed for not being able to adduce its evidence.

6. It is very important to comprehend the proper implication of the expression, '...from the date of appearance of the accused'. The question is what would happen where there are more than one accused and they enter their appearance before the Court on different dates, certainly, the first date on which one of them appears or, for that matter, is surrendered or produced from a different jail cannot be taken to be the date of appearance in respect of the other accused persons who were yet to appear on that date or were absconding or were in custody in a different jail in connection with any other offence. Nor it can be the intention of the legislature that the case is to be split up accusedwise and order of discharge is to be passed under this Section of the Code severally in respect of the accused in whose case the period of four years from the date of his first appearance has been over without prosecution evidence being adduced in full. In my opinion a harmonious and sensible interpretation of the above clause occurring in Section 245(3) will be that they mean the appearance of the entire set of the accused as a whole and not one of the accused individually. This means in effect that the date on which the last absentee accused entered his appearance should be taken to be the date of appearance of all the accused and the period of four years is to be reckoned from that date. In the present case, as it has been already discussed above, out of the four accused, one, namely Azad, was not available during the first two years after the case was instituted on 26th September, 1989 and he surrendered before the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate for the first time on 28th June, 1991 (Vide order-sheet of the ld. CJM). Therefore, even if the provisions of Section 245(3) Cr.P.C. are to be blindly applied to this case, regardless of other settled principles governing their application, even then that would be possible only after the expiry of four years from the said date, that is, 28th June, 1991 on which the last accused surrendered before the Court for the first time and from that point of view clearly the petition filed by the accused persons for discharge under Section 245(3) Cr.P.C. was premature and untenable.

7. But, what is more important, the principle which should govern the Court in the matter of applying the provisions of Section 245(3) of the Code is that the relief available under this Section is not to be treated as automatic as soon as it is shown that the prosecution has failed to adduce any or all of the evidence referred to under Section 244 within four years of the appearance of the accused and a vital check has been provided by the legislature to the indiscriminate user of such extreme measures. This is that if the Magistrate is satisfied that it will not be in the interest of justice to do so, he will not discharge the accused under this Section. In this connection a verdict of a Division Bench of the Apex Court in Santosh De and Anr. v. Archana Guha and Ors. reported in : 1995CriLJ2640 will be very much relevant. Their Lordships in this case came to the finding that the discharge under this Section is not automatic and the nature of offence in particular along with the other relevant circumstances including the conduct of the accused would have to be taken into consideration by the Court in order to form its satisfaction for the purpose of coming to a finding as to whether it will or not be in the interest of justice to discharge the accused under the provisions of the said section. In the present case the ld. Court below appears to have applied this yardstick also in coming to his conclusion that it is not a fit case where an order of discharge of the accused persons under Section 245(3) will be justified. The complaint appears to be with regard to an alleged offence under Sections 29 read with 21 of the NDPS Act, 1985 which are punishable with imprisonment for not less than ten (10) years, the accused persons having allegedly manufactured or possessed huge quantity of offensive articles like heroin, charas, opium, calcium carbonate, morphin and other narcotic drugs based on alkaloids which have been recovered from their possession. It is alleged that the accused persons have been selling and exporting various narcotic drugs on interstate basis in a large scale. Thus it goes without saying that the nature of the allegations against the accused persons in the instant case is extremely serious and alarming for the future of the society as a whole.

8. From the foregoing discussion it becomes clear that in the first place strictly speaking, there has been no expiry of the prescribed time-limit of four years from the date of appearance of the accused as required under Section 245 Cr.P.C. Secondly, even if for the sake of argument it is assumed for a moment that there has been a lapse of four years from the date of appearance of the accused, even then in view of the serious nature and magnitude of the offence alleged against them, it cannot but be held that the ld. Trial Judge was perfectly justified in holding that it would not be in the interest of justice to pass an order of discharge in favour of the accused-petitioners on such a technical ground. The alleged commission of a heinous crime imperiling the whole social fabric should not be over-shadowed by considerations of delay in trial in the matter of which the prosecution had little fault. It is not a case where dates after dates have been fixed for evidence but the prosecution failed to adduce it. On the other hand, it is a case where the complaint lodged by the narcotic bureau could not be transferred to the Court of the ld. Trial Judge for commencing trial of the case due to the non-appearance or non-production of the accused for years together The case was not at all ripe for fixing date of trial in view of the absence of one of the accused and therefore, the question cannot arise at all for saying that the prosecution failed to adduce evidence.

9. The newly added provisions of Section 245(3) Cr.P.C. appear to have been intended to serve as a harmonising force, to strike a balance between the rights of the accused persons to get speedy trial and the rights of the society to be indemnified against the recurrence of crimes against it. It cannot be the intention of the legislature that these provisions should be blindly applied without making an assessment as to how far it will be safe and in the interest of justice regard being had to the nature of the offence alleged to set the accused free on purely technical grounds.

10. In any view of the matter, in the present case the proposed discharge of the accused persons under Section 245(3) Cr.P.C. will be unwarranted and unjustified and the Court below did not commit any error by refusing to allow their petition under Section 245(3) of the code. Accordingly the impugned order is upheld and the Revision application is dismissed. The ld. Trial Judge is hereby directed to proceed forthwith with the trial of this case if possible on day to day basis and to dispose of the same as expeditiously as possible preferably within a period of 4 (four) months from the date of communication of this judgment.

11. Let the Lower Court Records be sent down to the Court below at once per Special Messenger whose costs shall be borne by the O.P. and it shall be deposited by the 3rd April. 2001.