Party Can't Bypass Sessions Court And Directly Move High Court In Revision Against Order Framing Charge, Court Already Flooded: Rajasthan HC

Remarking that the court is already flooded with several quashing petitions under Section 482 CrPC, the Rajasthan High Court observed that though both High Court and Sessions Court have concurrent jurisdiction to review orders, a party cannot bypass the Sessions court's revisional jurisdiction.

Section 397, CrPC lays down the revisional powers of the High Court and the Sessions Court.The Court was hearing a quashing petition under Section 482, CrPC, challenging an FIR filed against the Petitioner as well as the order of the magistrate's court wherein charges were framed against him.

Justice Anoop Kumar Dhand in his order said, "This Court is already flooded with lot of Criminal Miscellaneous Petitions under Section 482 Cr.P.C. Hence one cannot be allowed to by-pass the revisional jurisdiction of the Sessions Court only because this Court can entertain a petition under Section 482 Cr.P.C. or both the High Court and the Sessions Court have concurrent jurisdiction under Section 397 Cr.P.C. No exceptional case has been made out by the petitioner for invoking the inherent jurisdiction of this Court to entertain a petition against the order of framing of impugned charges against him".

It was the case of the petitioner that there was a civil dispute pending between the Parties, for which a false FIR was filed against him for an incident that occurred in 1989, with an attempt to give criminal colour to the civil dispute. This FIR resulted in a negative report and a protest petition was filed in which cognizance was taken, and charges were framed against the petitioner. Against this order, the present petition was filed.

The petitioner argued that since the order of framing of charge was interlocutory in nature, the same was not revisable under Section 397, CrPC.

On these facts, the Court made two legal issues: 1) whether order of framing charges was interlocutory or final in nature? 2) whether the revision petition would lie before the High Court or the Court of Sessions?

On the first question, the Court referred to the Supreme Court case of Asian Resurfacing of Road Agency Pvt. Ltd. and Ors. v Central Bureau of Investigation in which it was held that the order of framing of charge was neither purely interlocutory nor final, and the same could be challenged before the High Court in a petition under Section 397 or Section 482, or under Art. 227.

For answering the second question, the Court perused Section 397, CrPC and highlighted the concurrent jurisdiction of the High Court and the Sessions Court, and further referred to the Supreme Court case of Pranab Kumar Mitra v. State of West Bengal and another in which it was held that:

“whether or not the High Court will exercise its revisional jurisdiction in a given case, must depend upon the facts and circumstances of that case. The revisional powers of the High Court vested in it by Section 439 Cr.P.C. do not create any right in favour of the litigant… The High Court is not bound to entertain an application in revision, or having entertained one, to order substitution in every case.”

In this background, the Court opined that since revisional powers had to be exercised sparingly, in case of two forums, it would be more appropriate to approach the lower forum first. It was within the discretion of the higher forum i.e. the High Court to consider whether the petition should be entertained or not.

Referring to various Supreme Court judgment's the court said:

“in the case of concurrent jurisdiction between two courts, if a revision petition is preferred before High Court, the said petition is maintainable, however, whether the petition can be entertained or not depends on discretion of the High Court, after taking into account the facts of the given case. Preferably, the revisional court would be Sessions Court, which would be duty bound to entertain the revision petition…".

It thereafter dismissed the plea after observing that the plea could have been filed before the Sessions Court and that in the present case no special circumstances had been shown to move a plea before the high court.

Case Title: Heera Lal & Ors. v State of Rajasthan & Anr.

Citation: 2025 LiveLaw (Raj) 15

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