Supreme Court sets aside Calcutta High Court order on finding legal aid counsel was appointed hours before award of life sentence

The Supreme Court recently set aside a Calcutta High Court decision wherein the High Court had awarded the life sentence to a murder accused, on the very same day that it appointed an advocate to defend the accused [Niranjan Das vs State of West Bengal]..The top court emphasised that courts should give adequate preparation time for legal aid counsel so they can be well-versed with the facts of the case. .In this case, however, the bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal noted that the High Court did not give the legal aid counsel reasonable time to prepare for her case. "This was a case where the appellant was convicted for the offence punishable under Section 302 of the IPC and was sentenced to undergo life imprisonment. Therefore, it was a duty of the Court to give a reasonable time to the advocate appointed to go through the file and get ready to assist the Court ... The High Court decided the appeal on the same day on which the advocate was appointed. In this case, the advocate appointed to represent accused was not granted even a reasonable time to prepare herself."The Court added that the objective of appointing a lawyer for an unrepresented accused is to ensure that justice is done to them. The Supreme Court proceeded to set aside the High Court order and remanded the matter back to the High Court for fresh consideration. .The case involved two persons who were accused in a murder case. One of these accused persons did not have a lawyer to represent him. Therefore, the High Court ordered that a lawyer be appointed for him. However, the High Court then proceeded to decide on the appeal on the very same day that legal aid counsel was appointed for the unrepresented accused. In its decision, the High Court upheld the conviction and life sentence imposed on the accused man. This decision was challenged before the Supreme Court..The Supreme Court noted that both the High Court and the trial court had convicted the accused only for the offence murder and not for the offence of a criminal act done by multiple persons with a common intention (Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code)..However, his legal aid counsel had specifically argued before the High Court that the appellant-accused shared no common intention with co-accused. This, the Supreme Court inferred, meant that the lawyer was unaware that the trial court did not convict the accused with Section 34.Notably, the counsel had also adopted the same arguments as that of a co-accused.Both these factors pointed toward how the legal aid counsel was not given enough time to prepare for the case, the Supreme Court opined. "Obviously, the advocate was not aware that Section 34 of the IPC was not invoked by the trial court and therefore, she has argued as if the appellant was convicted with the aid of Section 34 of the IPC. This happened obviously because the appointed advocate was not given time to prepare herself," the Court remarked. .The Court proceeded to allow the appeal against the High Court order, which was asked to rehear the matter. .The Court also ordered that the accused be released on bail since he had already undergone over eight years in jail..Advocates Ranjan Mukherjee, Anindo Mukherjee and Rameshwar Prasad Goyal appeared for the accused, one Niranjan Das.Senior Advocate Ashok Kumar Panda with advocates Chanchal Kumar Ganguli, Aniket Gupta, Preeti Sirohi and Tuli Ghosh represented the West Bengal government..[Read Judgment]