The Supreme Court has held that a Magistrate Court cannot extend time for investigation under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) as it does not have the jurisdiction for the same. The bench of Justices UU Lalit, S Ravindra Bhat and Bela Trivedi referred to an earlier judgement of the Supreme Court which had held that only a Sessions court or a special court has the jurisdiction to grant such extension to the investigating authority under section 43D(2)(b) of UAPA.
Under section 43D(2)(b) of UAPA, the investigating agency can seek extension to complete investigation to up to 180 days.
The appeal was filed against an order passed by Madhya Pradesh High Court, Jabalpur bench on September 11, 2017. The appellant was booked under certain sections of IPC, Arms Act as well as Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
In March 2014, the investigating authority sought an extension for completing investigation which was granted by the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Bhopal. After 90 days in custody, the appellant filed an application for bail on the ground that no chargesheet was filed yet which was denied by the CJM court Bhopal and revision application was rejected by the Sessions Court, Bhopal. When the matter went to High Court, the court observed that the CJM court had passed an appropriate order and the period available for the investigating machinery to complete the investigation stood extended to 180 days and hence, the default bail applications filed by the appellant were not maintainable.
The counsel for the appellant, Senior Advocate Siddhartha Dave cited the Supreme Court’s decision in Bikramjit Singh vs. State of Punjab (2020) 10 SCC 616 whereby the court had held that so far as all offences under the UAPA are concerned, the Magistrate’s jurisdiction to extend time under the first proviso in Section 43-D(2)(b) is non-existent and that “the court” specified under the UAPA are Sessions Court. Under the NIA Act, all offences under UAPA, no matter who the investigating agency, are to be tried by Special Courts only. Thus, the court held that in absence of any notification issued by the government, the power to extend time for investigation under UAPA also lies in the Sessions Court and not Magistrate Court.
The court thus held that in so far as “Extension of time to complete investigation” is concerned, the Magistrate would not be competent to consider the request and the only competent authority to consider such request would be “the Court” as specified in the proviso in Section 43-D (2)(b) of the UAPA.
The court thus allowed the appeal and found them to be eligible for default bail. The court directed that the appellants be produced before the trial court within 3 days and directed the trial court to release them on bail.
The complete order may be read here: