Chhattisgarh High Court: Sanjay K Agrawal J., dismissed the petition being devoid of merits.
The facts of the case are such that the respondent 1 / accused was discharged on 6-6-2011 against which the petitioner filed application for grant of leave to appeal with a delay of approximately 2 years, but that application was dismissed as withdrawn with liberty to file appropriate petition, on 26-8-2013 against which the petitioner preferred revision on 12-11-2013 with an application for condonation of delay under Section 5 read with Section 14 of the Limitation Act, 1963 which has been dismissed by the revisional Court finding that the application for grant of leave to appeal was filed before this Court with a delay of approximately 2 years and Section 14 of the Limitation Act, 1963 has no application. Hence the instant petition was filed challenging the impugned order dated 18-7-2014 passed by the 2nd Additional Sessions Judge, Raipur in an unregistered criminal revision matter.
Counsel for the petitioners submitted that the revisional Court is absolutely unjustified in not condoning the delay by taking liberal view of the matter and also went wrong in not extending the benefit of Section 14 of the Limitation Act, 1963.
Counsel for the respondents submitted that application of Section 14 of the Limitation Act, 1963 is restricted only to a civil proceeding and that principle can be applied to appeal or revision arising from civil proceeding, but in no case, it can be extended to the criminal proceeding, as such, the application for condonation of delay has rightly been rejected.
Section 14 (1) and (2) of the Limitation Act, 1963 provides as under: –
“14. Exclusion of time of proceeding bona fide in court without jurisdiction. — (1) In computing the period of limitation for any suit the time during which the plaintiff has been prosecuting with due diligence another civil proceeding, whether in a court of first instance or of appeal or revision, against the defendant shall be excluded, where the proceeding relates to the same matter in issue and is prosecuted in good faith in a court which, from defect of jurisdiction or other cause of a like nature, is unable to entertain it.
(2) In computing the period of limitation for any application, the time during which the applicant has been prosecuting with due diligence another civil proceeding, whether in a court of first instance or of appeal or revision, against the same party for the same relief shall be excluded, where such proceeding is prosecuted in good faith in a court which, from defect of jurisdiction or other cause of a like nature, is unable to entertain it.”
The Court relied on judgment J. Kumaradasan Nair v. IRIC Sohan, (2009) 12 SCC 175 wherein it was observed that “Section 14(1) of the Limitation Act, 1963 is applicable only in suits in view of the definition of suit contained in Section 2(l) of the Limitation Act, 1963, but the principle thereof would be applicable for the purpose of condonation of delay in filing revision application in terms of Section 5 thereof.”
The Court thus observed that Section 14(1) of the Limitation Act, 1963, is only applicable to suits and by virtue of the principle of law laid down in J. Kumaradasan Nair (supra), it has been made applicable to revision or appeal arising out of the said proceeding, but its application is restricted only to civil proceeding, it does not apply to the criminal proceeding stretching beyond the civil proceeding and by virtue of Section 14(1), appeal or revision (civil), by virtue of the decision of the Supreme Court in J. Kumaradasan Nair (supra), it would be stretching too much to hold that it should also be applicable in criminal proceeding. However, Section 470(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 provides that in computing the period of limitation, the time during which any person has been prosecuting with due diligence another prosecution, whether in a Court of first instance or in a Court of appeal or revision, against the offender, shall be excluded.
The Court thus held that in the instant case there is delay of approximately two years from 6-6-2011 to 2-5-2013 in filing the application for grant of leave to appeal before this Court filed under Section 378(4) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 for which there is no satisfactory explanation offered before the revisional Court in revision and secondly, the provisions of Section 14 of the Limitation Act, 1963 are not applicable to a criminal proceeding like revision and the provision contained in Section 470(1) of the CrPC would be applicable.
In view of the above, petition was dismissed.[Devmati Khemka v. Raju Yadav, Criminal Misc. Petition No.744 of 2014, decided on 19-11-2020]
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