Special Courts, Exclusive Courts, and the Right to Appeal

A court that may take cognizance without a committal, a trial that must run day to day, and an appeal on facts that exists nowhere else in Indian criminal procedure.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: section 14 of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989, as substituted in 2016, requires every State Government, with the concurrence of the Chief Justice of the High Court, to establish an Exclusive Special Court for one or more districts, with a proviso that in districts recording fewer cases it shall instead specify a Court of Session to be a Special Court, and a further proviso that such courts have power to directly take cognizance of offences under the Act; section 14(2) makes it the duty of the State to establish enough courts for cases to be disposed of within two months, as far as possible; section 14(3) requires the proceedings to be continued from day to day until all witnesses in attendance have been examined, unless an adjournment is found necessary for reasons recorded in writing, with a proviso that the trial be completed within two months from the filing of the charge sheet, as far as possible.

Section 15 requires a Special Public Prosecutor for every Special Court and an Exclusive Special Public Prosecutor for every Exclusive Special Court, being a Public Prosecutor specified for the purpose or an advocate in practice for not less than seven years.

Section 14A provides that, notwithstanding the Code, an appeal lies from any judgment, sentence or order of such a court, not being an interlocutory order, to the High Court, both on facts and on law; that, notwithstanding section 378(3) of the Code, an appeal lies to the High Court against an order granting or refusing bail; and that every appeal shall be preferred within ninety days, extendable for sufficient cause, but no appeal shall be entertained after one hundred and eighty days.

Direct cognizance, and why it matters

An offence under the 1989 Act is triable by a Court of Session. Ordinarily a Sessions Court cannot take cognizance of an offence directly: the case must be committed to it by a Magistrate under the Code. That committal is a stage, and a stage is a delay.

The second proviso to section 14(1) removes it. A Special Court or Exclusive Special Court has power to directly take cognizance of offences under the Act. The charge sheet goes to the Special Court, and the trial begins.

Karnataka reached the same result by State amendment before the central change, substituting words to give the court original jurisdiction as well as the power to try. That State amendment is printed in the Act and is worth naming as evidence that the difficulty was recognised long before 2016.