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CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Criminal Appeal No. 195 of 1977.

Appeal by Special Leave from the Judgment and Order dated the 25-10-1976 of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in Crl. R., Case No. 660 of 1970 and Crl. R.P. No. 646 of 1976.

G. Yenkatrama Sastry and G. Narasinhulu for the Appellant. P. Parwneswara Rao and G. Narayana Rao for Respondent. The Judgment of the Court was delivered by KRISHNA IYER, J.-Some basic issues bearing on prescription of punishments arise for judicial investigation in this criminal appeal where leave has been limited to tailoring the sentence by appellate review to fit the gravity of the delinquency and the redemption of the deviant.. The facts leading up to the conviction may need brief narration. The appellant, along with another accused, deceived several desperate unemployed young men, received various sums of Rs. 1200/- by false pretences that they would secure jobs for them through politically influential friends and other make-believe representations. The offence of cheating under section 420 IPC was made out and convic- tion of both the accused followed. The 1st accused (appellant before us) is a young man around 28 years old and works as a Junior Assistant in the Planning and Financial Department of the Andhra Pradesh Secretariat and the other accused is his friend who personated as a State Port Officer. Before the trial court, there was a formal, almost pharisaic, fulfilment 'of the pre-sentencing provision in section 248 (2) Cr. P. C. 1973. The opportunity contemplated in the sub-section has a penological significance of far-reaching import, which has been lost on the trial Magistrate. For he disposed of this benignant obligation by a brief ritual :

Western jurisdiction and 'sociologists, from their own angle have struck a like note. Sir Samual Romilly, critical of the brutal penalties in the then Britain, said in 1817 :

"The laws of England are written in blood". Alfieri has suggested : 'society prepares the crime, the criminal commits it. George Micodotis, Director of Criminological Research Centre, Athens, Greece, maintains that 'Crime is the result of the lack of the right kind of education.' It is thus plain that crime is a pathological aberration, that the criminal can ordinarily be redeemed, that the State has to rehabilitate rather than avenge. The sub-culture that leads to anti-social behaviour has to be countered not by undue cruelty but by re-culturisation. Therefore, the focus of interest in penology is the individual, and goal is salvaging him for society. The infliction of harsh and savage punishment is thus a relic of past and regressive times. The human today views sentencing as a process of reshaping a person who has deteriorated into criminality and the modern community has a primary stake in the rehabilitation of the offender as a means of social defense. We, therefore consider a therapeutic, rather than an in 'terrorem' outlook, should prevail in our criminal courts, since brutal incarceration of the person merely produces laceration of his mind. In the words of George Bernard Shaw : 'If you are to punish a man retributively, you must injure him. If you are to reform him, you must improve him and, men are not improved by injuries'. We may permit ourselves the liberty to quote from Judge Sir Jeoffrey Streatfield :

Referring to the earlier Criminal Procedure Code and its deficiency in regard to sentencing, this Court observed in Telani (AIR 1974 SC 228, 236) "Finally comes the post-conviction stage where the current criminal system is weakest. The Court's approach has at once to be socially informed and personalised. Unfortunately, the meaningful collection and presentation of the penological facts bearing on the background of the individual, the dimension of damage, the social milieu and what not-these are not provided in the Code and we have to make intelligent hunches on the basis of materials adduced to prove guilt. In this unsatisfactory situation which needs legislative remedying we go by certain broad features."

The new Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 incorporates some of these ideas and gives an opportunity in s. 248(2) to both parties to bring to the notice of the court facts and circumstances which win help personalize the sentence from a reformative angle. This Court, in Santa Singh (1976) 4 SCC 190, has emphasized how fundamental it is to put such provision to dynamic judicial use, while dealing with the analogous provisions in s. 235(2) "This new provision in s. 235(2) is in consonance with the modern trends in penology and sentencing procedures. There was no such provision in the old Code,. It 'was realised that sentencing is an important stage in the process of administration of criminal justice- as important as the adjudication of guilt-and it should not be con-signed to a Subsidiary position as if it were a matter of not much consequence. It should be a matter of some anxiety to the court to impose an appropriate punishment on the criminal and sentencing should, therefore, receive serious attention of the Court. (p. 194.).