Acquittal, The legal certification usually by jury verdict that an accused person is not guilty of the charged offence. [fr. acquitter, Fr.; quietus, Lat., to free, acquit, or discharged], a deliverance and setting free of a person from the suspicion or guilt of an offence; also to be free from entries and molestations by a superior lord, for services issuing out of lands, Cowel. Acquittal is of two kinds--(1) Acquittal in deed, as when a person is cleared by verdict; and (2) Acquittal in law, as if two be indicted for a felony, the one as principal and the other as accessory, and the jury acquit the principal, by law the accessory is also acquitted, 2 Inst. 384.
Means the legal certification, usually by jury verdict, that an accused person is not guilty of the charged offence, Black Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 24.
If person is acquitted and ordered to be discharged it is illegal any longer to detain him, and the duty of seeing that he is at once discharged is upon the governor of the prison, and he will be liable for any illegal act of the prison warders though done without his knowledge, Mee v. Cruikshank, (1902) 20 Cox 210.
Having given our anxious consideration to the language employed both in s. 417(1) of the old Code and s. 2(a) of the Act we are of opinion that when an accused is acquitted of a major charge but convicted under a minor charge, it is still an acquittal under the major charge which can be challenged by the State before the High Court in an appeal under s. 417(1) of the old Code. The same principle will apply in the case of s. 2(a) of the Act if a person had been acquitted by the trial Court under a major charge and the High Court on appeal sets aside the acquittal under the major charge and sentences the person to imprisonment for life or to a sentence of not less than ten years, Kishore Singh v. State of Madhya Pradesh, AIR
1977 SC 2267 (2269): (1977) 4 SCC 524. [Supreme Court (Enlargement of Criminal Application Jurisdictions) Act, 1970, s. 2(a)]
It does not mean that the trial must have ended in a complete acquittal but would also include the case where an accused has been acquitted of the charge of murder and has been convicted of a lesser offence, Tarachand Darmu Sutar v. State of Maharashtra, AIR 1962 SC 130 (132): (1962) 2 SCR 775. [Constitution of India, Art. 134 (1)(a)]