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On 25th April, 2001 the appeals were heard by the Constitution Bench and during the course of hearing attention of the Constitution Bench was invited to the decision of an earlier Constitution Bench in Abdul Rehman Antulay and Ors.Vs. R.S. Nayak & Anr. (1992) 1 SCC 225 and the four judgments referred to in the order of reference dated 19th September, 2000 by the Bench of three learned Judges. It appears that the learned Judges of the Constitution Bench were of the opinion that the directions made in the two Common Cause cases and the two Raj Deo Sharma's cases ran counter to the Constitution Bench directions in Abdul Rehman Antulay's case, the latter being five-Judge Bench decision, the appeals deserved to be heard by a Bench of seven learned Judges. The relevant part of the order dated 26th April, 2001 reads as under:-

"The Constitution Bench judgement in A.R. Antulay's case holds that "it is neither advisable nor feasible to draw or prescribe an outer time limit for conclusion of all criminal proceedings".

Even so, the four judgements afore-mentioned lay down such time limits. Two of them also lay down to which class of criminal proceedings such time limits should apply and to which class they should not.

We think, in these circumstances, that a Bench of seven learned Judges should consider whether the dictum afore-mentioned in A.R. Antulay's case still holds the field; if not, whether the general directions of the kind given in these judgements are permissible in law and should be upheld.

21. Several cases marking the trend and development of law applying Maneka Gandhi and Hussainara Khatoon(I) principles to myriad situations came up for the consideration of this Court by a Constitution Bench in Abdul Rehman Antulay and Ors. Vs. R.S. Nayan and Ors. (1992) 1 SCC 225, (A.R. Antulay, for short). The proponents of right to speedy trial strongly urged before this Court for taking one step forward in the direction and prescribing time limits beyond which no criminal proceeding should be allowed to go on, advocating that unless this was done, Maneka Gandhi and Hussainara Khatoon(I) exposition of Article 21 would remain a mere illusion and a platitude. Invoking of the constitutional jurisdiction of this Court so as to judicially forge two termini and lay down periods of limitation applicable like a mathematical formula, beyond which a trial or criminal proceeding shall not proceed, was resisted by the opponents submitting that the right to speedy trial was an amorphous one something less than other fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. The submissions made by proponents included that the right to speedy trial flowing from Article 21 to be meaningful, enforceable and effective ought to be accompanied by an outer limit beyond which continuance of the proceedings will be violative of Article 21. It was submitted that Section 468 of the Code of Criminal Procedure applied only to minor offences but the Court should extend the same principle to major offences as well. It was also urged that a period of 10 years calculated from the date of registration of crime should be placed as an outer limit wherein shall be counted the time taken by the investigation.

The other reason why the bars of limitation enacted in Common Cause (I), Common Cause (II) and Raj Deo Sharma (I) and Raj Deo Sharma (II) cannot be sustained is that these decisions though two or three-judge Bench decisions run counter to that extent to the dictum of Constitution Bench in A.R. Antulay's case and therefore cannot be said to be good law to the extent they are in breach of the doctrine of precedents. The well settled principle of precedents which has crystalised into a rule of law is that a bench of lesser strength is bound by the view expressed by a bench of larger strength and cannot take a view in departure or in conflict therefrom. We have in the earlier part of this judgment extracted and reproduced passages from A.R. Antulay's case. The Constitution Bench turned down the fervent plea of proponents of right to speedy trial for laying down time-limits as bar beyond which a criminal proceeding or trial shall not proceed and expressly ruled that it was neither advisable nor practicable (and hence not judicially feasible) to fix any time-limit for trial of offences. Having placed on record the exposition of law as to right to speedy trial flowing from Article 21 of the Constitution this Court held that it was necessary to leave the rule as elastic and not to fix it in the frame of defined and rigid rules. It must be left to the judicious discretion of the court seized of an individual case to find out from the totality of circumstances of a given case if the quantum of time consumed upto a given point of time amounted to violation of Article 21, and if so, then to terminate the particular proceedings, and if not, then to proceed ahead. The test is whether the proceedings or trial has remained pending for such a length of time that the inordinate delay can legitimately be called oppressive and unwarranted, as suggested in A.R. Antulay. In Kartar Singh's case (supra) the Constitution Bench while recognising the principle that the denial of an accused's right of speedy trial may result in a decision to dismiss the indictment or in reversing of a conviction, went on to state, "Of course, no length of time is per se too long to pass scrutiny under this principle nor the accused is called upon to show the actual prejudice by delay of disposal of cases. On the other hand, the court has to adopt a balancing approach by taking note of the possible prejudices and disadvantages to be suffered by the accused by avoidable delay and to determine whether the accused in a criminal proceeding has been deprived of his right of having speedy trial with unreasonable delay which could be identified by the factors (1) length of delay, (2) the justification for the delay, (3) the accused's assertion of his right to speedy trial, and (4) prejudice caused to the accused by such delay." (para 92).