In Special Leave Petition (Crl.) No. 7976 Of 2023 -SC- Supreme Court rules successive petitions under Section 482 Cr.P.C. cannot be allowed to stall proceedings
Justice C.T. Ravikumar & Justice Sanjay Kumar [30-10-2023]

Read Order: Bhisham Lal Verma v. State of Uttar Pradesh and another

Chahat Varma

New Delhi, October 31, 2023: In a significant decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that individuals cannot file multiple successive petitions under Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr.P.C.) to challenge the same order or proceeding, particularly when all the grounds for challenge were accessible at the initial filing of the petition.

The ruling comes in a case where the petitioner, a government official, was accused of irregularities in the construction of toilets under a government scheme and embezzlement of public funds. After the government granted sanction to prosecute him, he filed a petition under Section 482 Cr.P.C. challenging only the sanction order. The Allahabad High Court granted him permission to approach the Trial Court to challenge the sanction order. However, much later, the petitioner filed a second petition under Section 482 Cr.P.C., seeking to quash the charge sheet, the cognizance order, and the proceedings against him. The High Court dismissed this petition, holding that the petitioner could not keep challenging the proceedings one by one and that he should have raised all his grounds for challenge in the first petition itself.

The division bench of Justice C.T. Ravikumar and Justice Sanjay Kumar endorsed the judgment in S. Madan Kumar vs. K. Arjunan [LQ/MadHC/2006/237], which was delivered by the Madras High Court. This judgment had emphasized that a person invoking Section 482 of the Cr.P.C. should present all available pleas honestly at the outset and should not approach the court with instalment pleas. While it acknowledged that changes in circumstances during a criminal case might warrant invoking the court's inherent jurisdiction, it highlighted that a person, when aware of all the facts and circumstances, cannot withhold some of them to file another petition seeking the same relief.

The bench noted that while there was no absolute rule prohibiting a second petition under Section 482 of the Cr.P.C. in every situation, the permissibility of such a petition depends on the specific facts and circumstances of each case.

 “Permitting the filing of successive petitions under Section 482 Cr.P.C. ignoring this principle would enable an ingenious accused to effectively stall the proceedings against him to suit his own interest and convenience, by filing one petition after another under Section 482 Cr.P.C., irrespective of when the cause therefor arose. Such abuse of process cannot be permitted,” remarked the division bench.

With the above observations, the court concluded that in the case at hand, the charge sheet and the cognizance of the case were already in place before the first petition was filed under Section 482 of the Cr.P.C. In that initial petition, only the sanction order was challenged. Therefore, the petitioner was not allowed to later invoke the High Court's inherent jurisdiction to challenge the charge sheet and cognizance order. The court determined that the order of the Allahabad High Court, which upheld this position, was sound and did not warrant any interference.

Accordingly, the special leave petition was held to be devoid of merit and was dismissed.