Renukaswamy murder case: Karnataka High Court faults trial court for seeking probation officer’s report before granting pardon to approver
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The High Court of Karnataka has found fault with a trial court’s decision of seeking report from the Probationer Officer (PO) before granting pardon to Pradoosh, an accused in the Renukaswamy murder case, and directed the trial court to pass a fresh order on the plea for pardon without referring to the report of the PO about the conduct of Pradoosh.
However, the High Court made it clear that the other accused, including actor Darshan, cannot challenge the order of the trial court granting pardon on its merit as the limited right of the other accused persons to challenge order of granting pardon under Section 306 of the Criminal Procedure Code to an accused turning approver, is restricted to question only its procedural aberration and not on its merit.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order while partly allowing Darshan’s plea challenging the legality of trial court’s decision in seeking report from the PO on the background and conduct of Pradoosh before considering the latter’s application seeking pardon on becoming an approver in the murder case.
While remitting the matter back, the High Court directed the trial court to pass fresh order within a week on plea for pardon without referring to the report of the PO. The High Court also made it clear that the trial court will have to only pass the order afresh and there is no need to re-hear the application for pardon all over again.
On examining the provisions of Section 4 of the Probation of Offenders Act, the High Court pointed out that PO’s report can only be called for in three circumstances — all post-conviction.
The first circumstance to call for report from PO would be, when the sentence has to be drawn post conviction; the next, when suspension of sentence should happen and the third, when the convicted accused should be released on probation. All the three instances are yet to come about in the present case, the High Court said..
“Therefore, the trial court concerned has misdirected itself in law, ignoring the mandate of the provisions of the Act and has chosen to suo motu call for a report from the hands of the PO,” Justice Nagaprasanna said while pointing out that this act of the trial court was “wholly unnecessary, apart from it being in blissful ignorance of the tenets of law.”
Though the prosecution has said that report of the PO could be ignored as the trial court did not rely on it for granting pardon to Pradoosh, the High Court said that decision to take report from PO is contrary to the law even though the report was not relied on by the trial court.
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