Courts can't enhance sentence in appeal by accused, SC rules

Hindustan Times

06-06-2025

A person who challenges their conviction cannot be punished more harshly in return, the Supreme Court has ruled, holding that a court cannot enhance a sentence in an appeal filed by the accused unless the prosecution or complainant has independently sought a stiffer jail term.
The ruling reinforces a key safeguard in criminal jurisprudence that the right to appeal should not carry the risk of harsher punishment, leaving an accused worse off, and that courts cannot exercise revisional powers on its own motion to increase punishment without a formal challenge.
A bench of justices BV Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma, in a judgment on Wednesday, clarified the limits of appellate powers, underlining that enhancing the sentence in an appeal filed solely by the accused would amount to penalising a person for exercising their statutory and constitutional right to appeal.
'The appellate court, in an appeal filed by the accused, cannot while maintaining the conviction enhance the sentence...particularly, when no appeal or revision has been filed either by the State, victim or complainant for seeking enhancement of sentence,' said the bench, setting aside the conviction and five-year sentence imposed on a man for abetment to suicide.
The ruling came in a case from Tamil Nadu, where a man convicted by a trial court for offences under Sections 354 (assault or criminal force to outrage modesty) and 448 (house trespass) of the Indian Penal Code had approached the Madras high court seeking relief. However, the high court not only upheld his conviction on those counts but also convicted him under Section 306 (abetment to suicide) -- a charge on which he had been acquitted at trial -- and sentenced him to five years' rigorous imprisonment in September 2021. This was done even though neither the state, victim, nor complainant had challenged the trial court's acquittal on the abetment charge.
Calling this action unsustainable in law, the bench emphasised the core principle that 'no appellant by filing an appeal can be worse-off than what he was.'
In a detailed judgment, the top court underscored that the right of appeal is not just statutory, but 'also a constitutional right in the case of an accused.'
'That a right of appeal is an invaluable right, particularly for an accused who cannot be condemned eternally by a trial judge, without having a right to seek a re-look of the Trial Court's judgment by a superior or appellate court,' it said.
The bench added that an appellate court has limited options in such cases – it may acquit the accused, order a retrial, reduce the sentence, or dismiss the appeal. But it cannot exercise powers of revision to enhance punishment, held the court.
'In an appeal filed only by the accused/convict, the high court cannot suo motu exercise its revisional jurisdiction and enhance the sentence against the accused while maintaining the conviction,' it declared.
The court also pointed to Section 386(b)(iii) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), which explicitly states that an appellate court may alter a sentence 'but not so as to enhance the same' unless a separate appeal for enhancement has been filed by the state, complainant, or victim.
The bench took exception to the high court's invocation of suo motu revisional powers in a scenario where no party had sought enhancement or appealed the acquittal on the abetment charge. It proceeded to set aside the conviction under Section 306 and restored the sessions court's 2015 judgment, limited to the conviction under the other two charges.