His appeal was filed in 2008 and heard in 2026, and the delay itself shortens the sentence
Convicted of preparing to commit dacoity on a night in 2006, he has been in the criminal process for two decades. The conviction stands; the three-year term comes down to two.
On 24 September 2026 Justice Mandeep Pannu decided a criminal appeal numbered 285-SB of 2008. The conviction it challenged was recorded in January 2008 and the sentence three days later. The offence was committed in June 2006.
The conviction
The case was registered in June 2006 under Sections 399 and 402 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 25 of the Arms Act. Those sections punish not a completed robbery but the steps before it: Section 399 makes preparation to commit dacoity an offence, and Section 402 makes assembling for that purpose one.
The appellant was convicted along with three co-accused and sentenced, the substantive term being three years.
The FIR was registered at Police Station Nirwana in Jind district. The appellant was tried with three co-accused before the Sessions Judge, Jind, and all four were convicted and sentenced identically: rigorous imprisonment for three years each under Section 399 IPC with a fine of Rs 3,000 each, and three months' rigorous imprisonment in default, with further terms under Section 402 IPC and Section 25 of the Arms Act.
Offences of this kind rest on what the police say they interrupted rather than on a completed crime, which is why the circumstances of apprehension usually decide them. There is no victim to depose, no property recovered from a robbery, and often no independent witness — what there is, is a police account of finding men assembled somewhere at night.
What the Court kept
The conviction was not disturbed. The Court examined the circumstances in which the appellant was apprehended and found no reason to interfere with the findings on guilt.
What it revisited was the sentence, and the grounds it gives are almost entirely about the passage of time.
The defence of false implication
The appellant's case was that the arrest never happened as the prosecution described it. He and one co-accused, it was argued, were picked up by the police at Narwana, and the other two from their own respective places — not from the octroi kotha where the prosecution said the four had assembled. The accused were already wanted in other cases, and this case was planted on them to add another. The registration of a further case against the appellant the following day was said to support that account.
The State's answer was that the defence version was an assertion and nothing more. The prosecution witnesses had deposed categorically to the apprehension at the octroi kotha, and cross-examination had produced nothing to show the accused were picked up elsewhere.
The Court accepted the State's position, and its reasoning identifies precisely what was missing. The plea was unsupported by any evidence. No defence witness was examined to establish that the men were picked up from their respective places, or that they were not at the octroi kotha at the relevant time. In their statements under Section 313 of the Code the accused denied the prosecution case and pleaded false implication — but a mere denial, the judgment holds, cannot by itself establish the defence version.
That is a point of general application in cases built on an interrupted assembly. Where the whole offence is the gathering, a defence that the gathering never occurred has to be proved like any other fact; the burden does not shift simply because the accused says the police lied.
Two decades in the process
The occurrence pertains to 2006, and the appellant has been facing proceedings for about two decades. The trial itself took place long ago. The appeal has remained pending since 2008 — eighteen years between filing and judgment.
The appellant also placed his medical condition before the Court as a circumstance for consideration.
Taking those together, the Court reduced the sentence under Sections 399 and 402 IPC from three years to two. The fine, and the sentence in default of paying it, remain unaltered, as does the sentence under Section 25 of the Arms Act. All substantive sentences run concurrently, and the period already undergone is to be set off.
What this kind of order recognises
A reduction of this sort is not a finding that the trial court sentenced wrongly. The three-year term was lawful when passed. What has changed is everything around it.
A sentence is meant to be served in some proximity to the offence, when it can still serve deterrence and the prospect of reform. A man who has spent twenty years attending court on a charge of preparing to commit dacoity has already borne a punishment the statute never prescribed, and courts increasingly treat that burden as a sentencing circumstance rather than an administrative misfortune.
There is also a narrower point in the way the reduction is structured. Only the substantive term under Sections 399 and 402 was touched. The fine, the default sentence and the Arms Act sentence were expressly left alone, and the sentences run concurrently with set-off for time already served. A court reducing a sentence for delay is adjusting the custodial element, not reopening the whole disposal.
The judgment is recorded as speaking and reasoned.