Shah Kantilal Bheemchand vs State of Gujarat

K.T. Thomas, J.—Leave granted.

The Appellant is one among the accused who were convicted for the offence u/s 302 with the help of Section 149 of the Indian Penal Code. He filed an appeal in the High Court in the year 1997 and applied for suspension of sentence and the same was not granted by the High Court. He again repeated the prayer for suspension in the year 2001 but that was again rejected by the High Court as per the impugned order.

Intially, we thought of granting the benefit of the decision of this Court in the matter of Smt. Akhtari Bi Vs State of M.P. (2001) 4 SCC 355 but Mr. Sushil Kumar learned senior counsel submitted that he may have to wait for another period to acquire the benefit of that judgment. When he submitted that there is no scope for the appeal to be boarded in the near future before the High Court we called for a report from the Registrar of the Gujarat High Court. The report sent by the Registrar shows that appeals are pending in the High Court of Gujarat from 1992 onwards in which persons convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment are waiting to have their turn to reach. This is a very disturbing picture. Some measures have to be adopted for early clearance of such an alarming backlog of life convicts waiting to have their first appeals from 1992 onwards adjudicated on.

Mr. Sushil Kumar, learned senior counsel then submitted that the Appellant in this case was convicted without ascribing any particular overt act to him. In other words his contention is that merely because of this presence in the assembly he too has been tagged with the rest of the members and convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. On the said submission we issued notice to the Respondent-State. We requested the standing counsel for the State of Gujarat to check up the Trial Court judgment and submit before us whether any particular overt act has been attributed to the Appellant. She fairly conceded today that no such overt act is seen ascribed to the Appellant.

In the above situation, we persuade ourselves to suspend the sentence passed on the Appellant, We do so. We direct the Appellant to be released on bail on executing a bond for such amount as the Trial Judge may fix with two solvent sureties to the satisfaction of the Trial Judge.

This appeal is disposed of accordingly.

We direct the Registrar of the High Court of Gujarat to bring a copy of this judgment to the notice of the Chief Justice of the High Court. For that purpose a copy of this judgment shall be forwarded to the Registrar concerned.