Supreme Court of India (Gajendragadkar, Wanchoo and Das Gupta JJ.; judgment delivered by Das Gupta J.), Criminal Appeal No. 44 of 1961, decided 10 May 1963 — Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898, ss. 476, 477, 478, 479, 479A (s. 479A inserted by the 1955 Amendment Act); Indian Penal Code, ss. 193, 467, 467/120B, 504, 506. Held: the special procedure of s. 479A CrPC is prescribed only for prosecuting a witness for intentionally giving false evidence in, or intentionally fabricating false evidence for use in, a judicial proceeding — the very acts made punishable under s. 193 IPC and cognate sections in Chapter XI. Applying the principle that a special provision prevails over a general one, the scope of the special provision must be strictly construed; s. 479A therefore has no application to prosecutions for other offences (such as forgery under s. 467 IPC or conspiracy under s. 467/120B IPC), and as regards such other offences ss. 476, 477, 478 and 479 CrPC continue to apply even after the enactment of s. 479A. The Court expressly declined to decide (i) whether action can still be taken under s. 476 where action could have been taken under s. 479A but was not taken (a question on which judicial opinion diverges), and (ii) whether the appellant prima facie committed the s. 467/467-120B offences. Background: the appellant was a prosecution witness in a ss. 504/506 IPC case that ended in acquittal on 10 May 1957; on a s. 476 application the Presidency Magistrate (J. M. Bir) treated s. 479A as a complete bar against complainant-side witnesses and complained only against the complainant Mayadas Khanna; the Calcutta High Court (judgment and order dated 16 September 1960 in Criminal Appeal No. 56 of 1958) set aside that order as regards the appellant and directed that a complaint be made against him; the Supreme Court dismissed the appellant's appeal, leaving the High Court's direction intact.
