Criminal — Memorandum of Appeal and Memorandum of revision

A Magistrate in Panvel convicts a shopkeeper of a cheating offence and sentences him to a year in jail. His family's first question is not whether he is innocent but where the next door is, and how fast it can be knocked on. The answer is not the same as in a civil case. The court you go to depends on who convicted him and for how long he was sentenced, and the route changes again if it was the State that lost an acquittal. Which provision gives the appeal, and what goes into the petition?

In two minutes

A criminal appeal exists only where the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023 (BNSS, which replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure 1973) provides one (s.413), is made by a written petition of appeal with the judgment attached (s.423), and goes to the Sessions Court, High Court or Supreme Court according to who convicted and the sentence (s.415); revision under ss.438–442 is a supervisory power that is barred where an appeal lay but was not brought.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Drafting, Pleading and Conveyancing – III on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.