Mumbai: In a significant ruling, the High Court on Monday held that a special court cannot frame charges against an accused under the provisions of stringent MCOCA, just because it has taken cognisance of the complaint/case filed against the accused.
A division bench of Justices Indrajit Mahanty and Sarang Kotwal also said that a special court hearing cases under the MCOCA, must be “satisified” by the evidence placed on record and only then proceed with framing of charges. The bench was seized with a bunch of appeals filed by accused booked for killing a politician in Pune’s Pimpri-Chinchwad corporation elections.
The accused through these appeals had challenged a 2017 order passed by a special court refusing to discharge them from the murder case. They argued that the prosecution has wrongly invoked provisions of the MCOCA and thus, the court must not frame charges under this stringent law.
The accused further argued that they could not be prosecuted under this anti-crime syndicate law, as their case did not had the requisite ingredients for invoking the MCOCA. However, the special court trashed their contentions on the sole ground that it had taken cognizance of the complaint filed by the police under the provisions of MCOCA and thus it was bound to frame charges under the said law.
This opinion of the special court was trashed by the bench led by Justice Mahanty, saying, “The question of framing of charges arises only after cognizance is taken by the special court. Importantly, framing of the charge is a distinct and subsequent step after taking cognizance of the offence under the MCOC Act.” “Taking cognizance under the MCOC Act does not automatically enable the special court to frame charges against the accused under the MCOC Act.
For that purpose, the special court has to apply all the settled legal principles in framing charges against the accused,” the bench ruled. The judges further said that in the instant case, the special court did not apply the legal principals. “Therefore, we are of the considered opinion that this is a fit case wherein the matter must be remanded back to the special court for fresh consideration of merits of the case for deciding framing of charges under MCOCA,” the bench said. –
