Revision

In one line

A superior court may send for the record of a subordinate criminal court and correct what is wrong with it, whether or not anybody has appealed.

In exam wording: sections 438 to 445 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 confer on the High Court and the Sessions Judge the power to call for and examine the record of any inferior Criminal Court to satisfy themselves as to the correctness, legality or propriety of any finding, sentence or order and the regularity of the proceedings, and prescribe how that power is exercised.

Why the law has this at all

Appeal is a right, and rights have to be used. Somebody has to know he has one, want to use it, be able to afford it, and file in time. Where any of these fails, an order that is plainly wrong stands.

Revision fills that hole. It belongs to the court, not to the party. The High Court or the Sessions Judge may call for a record on its own, or on anybody's application, or because the matter otherwise comes to its knowledge, and may correct what it finds. That is why section 444 says, startlingly, that no party has a right to be heard in revision, though the Court may hear anyone it thinks fit: the proceeding is not the party's.

But a power that wide would swallow the appeal system if it were left unbounded, so the Sanhita bounds it in four ways. It does not reach interlocutory orders, section 438(2). It cannot be used by a man who had an appeal and did not take it, section 442(4). It cannot turn an acquittal into a conviction, section 442(3). And it cannot be tried twice, once before the Sessions Judge and again before the High Court, sections 438(3) and 440(3).

Some words this chapter uses

An inferior Criminal Court is defined for this purpose by the Explanation to section 438(1): all Magistrates, whether Executive or Judicial, and whether exercising original or appellate jurisdiction, are deemed inferior to the Sessions Judge.

An interlocutory order is one made in the course of a proceeding which does not decide the matter itself.

Propriety is wider than legality: an order may be within power and still improper.

Section 438: calling for the record

Sub-section (1), the power. The High Court or any Sessions Judge may call for and examine the record of any proceeding before any inferior Criminal Court situate within its or his local jurisdiction for the purpose of satisfying itself or himself:

• as to the correctness, legality or propriety of any finding, sentence or order recorded or passed; and
• as to the regularity of any proceedings of that inferior Court,