Supreme Court Issues Notice On Ex-MP S Venugopal Chary's Challenge To Conviction, Sentence For Allegedly Hurting Police Official; Exempted From Surrender

While issuing notice on S Venugopala Chary's plea challenging his conviction and sentence (6 months) in a case involving allegations of hitting a police official, the Supreme Court today extended the exemption from surrender granted earlier to the former MP.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan passed the order.

Briefly put, Chary was booked on the allegations of hitting a police official. Reportedly, he told the official not to harass and arrest certain persons accused in a case. To this, the official replied that it was not in his purview. Chary then scolded him saying that he was talking in a drunken state and gave a fist blow on his mouth. Chary also caught hold of the official's shirt collar.

On 06.02.2006, the trial Court convicted Chary under Section 332 of IPC (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty) and imposed sentence of simple imprisonment for a period of 6 months as well as a fine of Rs.500/- (in default to suffer simple imprisonment for 1 month).

Challenging the conviction and sentence of imprisonment, Chary preferred an appeal. The appellate Court, on 21.10.2008, dismissed the appeal but modified the conviction into one under Section 323 of IPC. The sentence of imprisonment was confirmed.

Against this judgment, Chary filed a revision before the Telangana High Court. He contended inter-alia that there was no previous sanction to prosecute him (as he was a Lok Sabha MP) and the trial was without jurisdiction. He further claimed that the case was foisted only on evidence of interested witnesses, with an intention to harass him. It was also urged that the complainant-police official could not be treated as a public servant as he was not in uniform on the date of alleged incident and, therefore, offence under Section 332 IPC was not attracted.

By way of the order impugned in the present proceedings, the High Court upheld Chary's conviction (under Section 323 IPC) and sentence.

"Both the judgments are well considered, reasoned and well founded. The findings are concurrent. The petitioner failed to make out any case to interfere with the said judgments", it said.

Today, Senior Advocate S Nagamuthu appeared for Chary. When the bench posed to him that the alleged offense (under Section 323 IPC) must be compoundable, the senior counsel replied "under Section 360 (CrPC), you are never given admonition".

For context, Section 360 CrPC deals with release of a convict on probation of good conduct or after admonition. If any person, not under 21 years of age, is convicted of an offence punishable with fine only or with imprisonment for a term of seven years or less; and secondly, when any person under 21 years of age or any woman is convicted of an offence not punishable with death or imprisonment for life, they can be given probation. Both categories of offenders have to satisfy that they are not previous convicts. The relief can be granted having regard to the age, character or antecedents of the offender and to the circumstances in which the offence was committed.

Similar provisions are there in Probation of Offenders Act dealing with the power of court to release certain offenders on probation of good conduct and after admonition.

Case Title: S. VENUGOPALA CHARY Versus THE STATE OF TELANGANA (PREVIOUSLY STATE OF A.P.), SLP(Crl) No. 15149/2024

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