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New Delhi, Oct 30 (IANS) The Delhi High Court has held that a guilty plea cannot validate a prosecution which is barred by law, ruling that once a person has been convicted of an offence, he cannot be tried or punished again for the same act under a different case number.
Dismissing the second conviction of a convict serving life imprisonment, a single-judge bench of Justice Sanjiv Narula said: “Plea of guilt cannot confer jurisdiction. Once the bar under Section 300 of the CrPC or the rule against double jeopardy under Article 20(2) comes into force, the conviction is invalid, irrespective of the voluntariness of the plea or the sufficiency of the evidence.”
The Delhi High Court said the petitioner, Subhash Pahwa alias Subhash Chander, was already convicted under Section 411 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for possessing a stolen Ertiga car recovered from Dwarka in 2014, and was later convicted again in 2015 under another FIR for the same recovery. The second sentence, although based on a guilty plea, was found “void of jurisdiction”.
Justice Narula said, “The subsequent conviction… is based on the same Dwarka recovery of February 11, 2013, which had already formed the basis of his conviction on November 26, 2014.” The Delhi High Court said, “Applying the test of similarity and the WP(CRL) 3143/2023 Page 17 of 20 result test, the subsequent prosecution and conviction were without jurisdiction. Thus the subsequent conviction is vitiated by Article 20(2) and Section 300 CrPC.”
It further explained that the principle of double jeopardy prevents multiple prosecutions for the same offense or the same facts, and added: “The State cannot repeatedly prosecute or re-investigate a person for the same act or incident merely by changing the statutory label or filing a new FIR.”
Justice Narula said the magistrate’s act of recording the guilty plea without deciding the objection of the accused under Section 300 of the CrPC was “a serious irregularity.”
The Delhi High Court ruled, “Entering the guilty plea without determining the jurisdictional objection was a serious irregularity… Since the prosecution itself was stayed, the conviction was void ab initio.” In fact, it quashed the 2015 conviction under sections 411 and 482 of the IPC, directing all authorities, including police and jail records, to make necessary corrections within four weeks.
Justice Narula directed the Sentence Review Board (SRB) to reconsider the petitioner’s case for premature release, observing that “where multiple proceedings arise out of the same factual episode, the authorities should avoid treating that single incident as having multiple adverse antecedents. The law punishes separate offences, not overlapping narratives.”
Justice Narula concluded that “This jurisdiction corrects what the law prohibits; it does not retry what the law permits,” affirming that the constitutional protection against double jeopardy cannot be circumvented by procedural shortcuts or the accused’s own admission of guilt.
The Delhi High Court directed, “The SRB shall reconsider the petitioner’s case for premature release within eight weeks… In doing so, the SRB shall (i) consider the overlapping aspects arising from the single Dwarka recovery of February 11, 2013, as a single antecedent rather than multiple, and (ii) render a reasoned decision.”
–IANS
PDS/PGH