Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, Mar 11: High Court ruled that a criminal court cannot alter or recall its own final orders and said that the remedy available to the aggrieved party (prosecution) was to challenge the same in appeal.
The petitioners challenged common order passed by the Special Judge Designated under NIA Act, Anantnag whereby the said Court has allowed the application of the respondents for recall of orders dated 11.08.2023, 31.08.2023 and 17.08.2023 passed in three different cases arising out of three different FIRs in which the petitioners are facing trial before the said Court.
The petitioners filed separate three applications before the trial court seeking change of their custody back to the judicial custody. The said applications were allowed by the trial court in terms of three different orders passed in three separate cases in which the petitioners are facing trial.
By virtue of these three orders, a direction was issued to Superintendents of District Jails of the State of UP where the petitioners were lodged to handover their custody to Superintendent of District Jail, Mattan Anantnag. These orders came to be passed on 11.08.2023, 31.08.2023 and 17.08.2023. However, the prosecution contested these orders, and the trial court later recalled its own order to which the petitioners are aggrieved of.
Justice Sanjay Dhar set aside all the three recall orders passed by the trial court and held that no Court, when it has signed its judgment or final order disposing of a case, shall alter or review the same except to correct a clerical or arithmetical error.
The Court added that Section 362 of Cr. P. C. prohibiting the Court to alter or review its judgment or final order and this embargo is relaxed only in two conditions; one when the review of a judgment of final order is provided under the Code or when the same is provided by any other law for the time being in force”.
The court pointed out that the trial court’s action of recalling its order was inconsistent with legal provisions and the Supreme Court’s rulings on the matter as the trial court had no authority to review or revoke its own final order.
“For the foregoing reasons, the impugned order passed by the learned trial court is set aside, leaving it open to the respondents to avail appropriate remedy against orders dated 11.08.2023, 31.08.2023 and 17.08.2023 passed by the trial court”, the court concluded.
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