A fair price shop owner, sentenced to undergo four months imprisonment in 1990 for illegally stocking kerosene at his shop, was set free by the Supreme Court because of his advanced age. The court, however, upheld the conviction of the 89-year-old man from West Bengal.
Madan Mohan Kabiraj was found with possession of 187 litres of unaccounted kerosene during a Government inspection at his ration shop in Murshidabad district. He was charged under provisions of the Essential Commodities Act and the West Bengal Kerosene Control Order 1968.
It was a protracted battle for Kabiraj since the time the trial court sentenced him to four months rigorous imprisonment on April 20, 1990 untill the order passed now by the Supreme Court on January 12, 2018. During this period, the only reprieve was that when he approached the Calcutta High Court in appeal, he was granted bail within two months of the trial court order. Since that day (June 26, 1990), it took nearly 26 years for the HC to decide his appeal holding him guilty by an order passed on May 3, 2016. His punishment was reduced from four to three months and he was directed to surrender.
With the only hope left in Supreme Court, Kabiraj's appeal lingered on for a year. The evidence against him was crucial although his lawyer Dushyant Parashar persuaded the highest court to accept that the commodity seized as kerosene oil from his shop was in fact diesel oil which he separately purchased. The Court refused to accept the said statement and went on to uphold his guilt.
However, when the time came to uphold his conviction, the apex court became mindful of the fact that sending the 89-year old petitioner back to jail would not be in the fitness of things. The bench of Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan directed, "Having regard to the circumstances of this case and particularly the fact that the appellant is 89 years of age and that there is no other blemish against the appellant, we are of the opinion that the benefit of provisions of Probation of Offenders Act, 1958, be extended in the present case." The bench set aside his three-month sentence and directed his release.