Meghalaya High Court: In a criminal appeal seeking to quash and set aside the conviction of the accused and remand the matter to the Trial Court for retrial as he was provided with an ineffective legal aid resulting in denial of fair trial, the Division bench of W. Diengdoh J. and B. Bhattacharjee J.* stated that the legal aid must be real, substantial, and meaningful and any deficiency in the conduct of legal aid counsel would defeat the right of the accused to a fair trial. The Court observed that the legal aid provided to the accused during the trial was neither effective nor adequate, which has not only infringed his fundamental rights but also seriously prejudiced his defence in the case. Thus, the Court remanded the matter to the Trial Court for a retrial.
Background
An FIR was registered by the complainant under Section 377 of the Penal Code, 1860 (‘IPC’) read with Section 5(1) and 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (‘POCSO Act’) alleging that the accused along with another child in conflict with law raped her minor son, aged about six years.
The Trial Court convicted the accused and sentenced him to undergo 20 years of rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs 3,00,000 aggrieved by which the criminal appeal was filed before the present Court.
The accused stated that because of the inability to appoint a counsel of his choice, he was provided with a State appointed Legal Aid Counsel to defend himself at the trial and there was hardly any effective cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses on his behalf. On the other hand, the respondent claimed that retrial of a criminal case could be ordered only in exceptional cases where the trial was undertaken by the Trial Court having no jurisdiction or trial was vitiated by serious illegality or irregularity on account of the misconception of nature of proceeding.
Analysis and Decision
The Court relied on Sovaran Singh Prajapati v. State of Uttar Pradesh, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 351, and stated that the right of an accused to defend himself in a criminal proceeding is an integral facet of the right to life and personal liberty as enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution. The denial of effective legal aid in this regard would amount to violation of fundamental rights of the accused under Article 21 of the Constitution. Furthermore, the Court stated that legal aid must be real, substantial, and meaningful, and any deficiency in the conduct of legal aid counsel would defeat the right of the accused to a fair trial.
Upon examining Nasib Singh v. State of Punjab, (2022) 2 SCC 89, wherein the Supreme Court laid down instances when the Court could order a retrial on grounds of miscarriage of justice. However, the Court observed that the observations and instances laid down in the aforementioned case merely illustrative and not exhaustive in nature. Further, the power of the Appellate Court to remand a matter for retrial was not limited solely to the circumstances expressly mentioned therein. The Court further stated that the Supreme Court in the above mentioned case, had not laid down that a denial of a fair trial amounting to a violation of the mandate enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution, cannot be regarded as an exceptional circumstance for remanding the case for retrial.
In the present case, the Court considered that the Trial Court had examined 6 prosecution witnesses and derived that there was no indication that any effort was made in the cross-examination to look for inconsistencies in the prosecution evidence as the cross-examination for all the witnesses was very short.
The Court observed that the legal aid provided to the accused during the trial was neither effective nor adequate, which has not only infringed his fundamental rights but also seriously prejudiced his defence in the case. Thus, the Court stated that a retrial seems to be the only way to rectify the situation and remanded the matter to the Trial Court for a retrial.
[Shaniah Langstang v. State of Meghalaya, Crl. A. No.4 of 2024, decided on 16-7-2025]
*Judgment authored by-Justice B. Bhattacharjee
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the Appellant: K. C. Gautam, Advocate.
For the Respondents: K. Khan, Public Prosecutor and Mr. S. Sengupta, Additional Public Prosecutor
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