Supreme Court: a discharge order cannot be faulted for ignoring a precedent that did not yet exist

The Supreme Court restored the 1999 discharge of a Sabarmati Central Prison constable accused of helping an undertrial repair a mobile phone during a 1998 police raid that recovered arms, explosives and phones. The Additional Sessions Judge had discharged him under Section 227 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, while framing charges against four co-accused under the Indian Penal Code, Arms Act and Explosive Substances Act. Decades later, in 2025, the Gujarat High Court allowed the State's revision under Section 397 read with Section 2(d) Cr.P.C. and set aside the discharge, holding the trial court had ignored the principle in State of Andhra Pradesh v. Golkonda Linga Swamy (2010) that a charge can be framed on a possibility, not certainty, of guilt.

The Supreme Court held this was an error: that 2010 ruling did not exist in 1999, so the Sessions Court could not have 'lost sight of' a principle not yet laid down. Even treating this as a technical slip, the Court found it unjust to put the appellant on trial after this much delay, with no counter-affidavit on record and the fate of the co-accused's trial unknown. The discharge order was restored and the appeal allowed.