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8. In principle this Court would agree with the learned counsel for the petitioner but for the provisions under section 401 of the Code of Criminal Procedure that the High Court in exercise of revisional jurisdiction under section 397 CrPC cannot reverse an order of acquittal into one of conviction and it is only in rarity of cases such power should be exercised and, that too, only by an order of remand.

9. In "Sheonandan Paswan v. State of Bihar" (1987) 1 SCC 288 the Constitution Bench of the Hon'ble Supreme Court held that minute scrutiny of the evidence led by the parties before the lower fora is not permissible and it is only such illegality in law committed by the Court(s) within the jurisdiction of the High Court which can be said to be perverse or leading to manifest injustice and thereby causing miscarriage of justice which would invite exercise of the revisional jurisdiction under section 397 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

9. The observations in para 9 in Vimal Singh v. Khuman Singh would also be apt for recapitulation and, therefore, are being extracted below: (SCC pp. 226-27) "9. Coming to the ambit of power of the High Court under Section 401 of the Code, the High Court in its revisional power does not ordinarily interfere with judgments of acquittal passed by the trial court unless there has been manifest error of law or procedure. The interference with the order of acquittal passed by the trial court is limited only to exceptional cases when it is found that the order under revision suffers from glaring illegality or has caused miscarriage of justice or when it is found that the trial court has no jurisdiction to try the case or where the trial court has illegally shut out the evidence which otherwise ought to have been considered or where the material evidence which clinches the issue has been overlooked. These are the instances where the High Court would be justified in interfering with the order of acquittal. Sub-section (3) of Section 401 mandates that the High Court shall not convert a finding of acquittal into one of conviction. Thus, the High Court would not be justified in substituting an order of acquittal into one of conviction even if it is convinced that the accused deserves conviction. No doubt, the High Court in exercise of its revisional power can set aside an order of acquittal if it comes within the ambit of exceptional cases enumerated above, but it cannot convert an order of acquittal into an order of conviction. The only course left to the High Court in such exceptional cases is to order retrial.

10. The above consideration would go to show that the revisional jurisdiction of the High Courts while examining an order of acquittal is extremely narrow and ought to be exercised only in cases where the trial court had committed a manifest error of law or procedure or had overlooked and ignored relevant and material evidence thereby causing miscarriage of justice. The reappreciation of evidence is an exercise that the High Court must refrain from while examining an order of acquittal in the exercise of its revisional jurisdiction under the Code. Needless to say, if within the limited parameters, interference of the High Court is justified the only course of action that can be adopted is to order a retrial after setting aside the acquittal. As the language of Section 401 of the Code makes it amply clear there is no power vested in the High Court to convert a finding of acquittal into one of conviction."