A 1999 discharge is restored after the High Court faulted it by a judgment from 2010
Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu set aside a revisional order of 2025, holding it would not serve justice to put the appellant on trial at this distance of time.
A prison guard discharged in 1999 from a case arising out of an arms and explosives raid was sent back for trial by the Gujarat High Court in 2025, twenty-six years later, on the reasoning that the Sessions Court had lost sight of principles laid down by the Supreme Court in 2010. A Division Bench of Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Sheel Nagu noted that the decision the High Court relied on did not exist when the discharge order was passed, and set the High Court's judgment aside — holding that even treating that error as technical, it would not be in the interest of justice to subject the appellant to a trial at this distance of time.
A police raid in 1998 and a phone left for repair
The appellant was serving as a Sipahi at Sabarmati Central Prison. The prosecution case arose out of an incident of 23 March 1998, when a police raid on a residence resulted in an exchange of fire and the recovery of arms, explosives, ammunition and cellular phones. Crime No. 22 of 1998 was registered at Dariapur Police Station, inter alia under Section 122 of the Indian Penal Code.
The role attributed to the appellant was narrow: that one of the accused persons had given a mobile phone to him for repair while he was discharging his duties at the prison.
After the chargesheet was filed he applied for discharge under Section 227 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. On 13 September 1999 the Additional Sessions Judge, Court No. 10, Ahmedabad allowed the application and discharged him, while directing charges to be framed against the remaining four accused under Sections 122 and 120-B of the Penal Code, Sections 25(1-B), 28, 35 and 36 of the Indian Arms Act, 1959, and Sections 4 and 6 of the Explosive Substances Act, 1908.
A revision decided twenty-six years later
The State preferred a revisional application against the discharge. After what the judgment calls a considerable lapse of time, the Gujarat High Court allowed the revision on 11 August 2025, under Section 397 read with Section 2(d) of the Code, and set the discharge aside.
Its reasoning, as the Supreme Court extracted it, was that the trial court had gone into the evidence meticulously, entered into a roving inquiry, and had lost sight of the principles laid down in State of Andhra Pradesh versus Golkonda Linga Swamy, (2010) 9 SCC 368 — where it was held that it is immaterial whether a case rests on direct or circumstantial evidence, and that a charge can be framed if there are materials showing the possibility, as against the certainty, of the offence having been committed by the accused.
The difficulty the Bench identified is one of arithmetic. “Curiously enough”, it recorded, the decision the High Court relied on was not in existence on the date the Sessions Court allowed the application for discharge. The High Court therefore erred in observing that the Sessions Court had lost sight of principles laid down in it.
Why the appeal succeeded anyway
The Bench treated that error as merely technical, and did not rest the outcome on it. Its reason for interfering was the passage of time and the state of the record. The appellant having been discharged by an order of 13 September 1999, it would not be in the interest of justice to uphold the impugned judgment and subject him to a trial at this distance of time — particularly, the order adds, when no counter affidavit had been filed, so that the fate of the trial of the other accused was unavailable to the Court.
The arc is worth stating plainly. The incident is from March 1998. The discharge was ordered in September 1999 under Section 227 of the Code, the provision that lets a judge discharge an accused where he considers the record and documents disclose no sufficient ground for proceeding. The State's revision against it was decided in August 2025. The Supreme Court's order came in October 2026. Twenty-seven years separate the raid from this order, and twenty-six the discharge from the judgment that undid it.
Two gaps in the record told against the State. No counter affidavit had been filed in the appeal, which is why the Court recorded that the fate of the trial of the other four accused — charged under the Penal Code, the Arms Act and the Explosive Substances Act — was simply unavailable to it. And the High Court's own stated ground for interfering could not survive the dates.
Order
Leave was granted. The High Court's judgment of 11 August 2025 stands set aside and the appeal was allowed. Pending applications were disposed of.