High Court can't weigh evidence at charge stage: Supreme Court restores rape case

She delivered a baby in hospital, then hanged herself in the same room. The High Court let the accused walk free—because the father took too long to file the FIR.

A father took his teenage daughter to hospital for stomach pain. The doctors discovered she was pregnant. She gave birth to a baby boy at Harsh Hospital in Chakghat, a village in Madhya Pradesh's Rewa district. Then, while her father stepped out to arrange money, she tied a rope to the ceiling and ended her life.

Before she died, she told her father one thing: the child was conceived through Amit Tiwari, a fellow villager. She wanted to live with him. The father went to the police. He filed an FIR (a written complaint that starts a police investigation). The trial court framed charges of rape under Section 376 IPC (punishment for rape) and aggravated penetrative sexual assault under the POCSO Act (the law protecting children from sexual offences). But the High Court of Madhya Pradesh discharged the accused—on the ground that the father had taken too long to report the crime.

The Supreme Court of India called that order "incomprehensible." In Manendra Prasad Tiwari v. Amit Kumar Tiwari & Anr., a bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice Dr. D.Y. Chandrachud restored the charges for trial. The judgment, delivered on August 12, 2022, is a sharp reminder of what a High Court can and cannot do when it reviews a charge-framing order.

When the father walked into the police station

The sequence of events matters. The father discovered his daughter was pregnant only when he took her to hospital for stomach pain. She delivered the baby. She named the man. She hanged herself. The father then went to the police station at Chakghat, District Rewa, and lodged FIR No. 0064/2020 on April 28, 2020.

The trial court—the Special Judge, POCSO, at Tyonthar, Rewa—examined the material. On December 18, 2020, it framed charges against Amit Tiwari under Section 376(1) IPC and Section 5(a)(ii)/6 of the POCSO Act. The court discharged the accused of abetment to suicide under Section 306 IPC, finding no prima facie evidence that he had driven the girl to kill herself. That part was never appealed.

The accused then filed a criminal revision before the High Court of Madhya Pradesh at Jabalpur. A revision under Section 397/401 CrPC (the High Court's limited power to examine whether a lower court's order was legal or proper) is not a full appeal. The High Court can call for records and check for legality—it cannot re-decide the case.

What the High Court did—and why the Supreme Court stepped in

The High Court allowed the revision on December 2, 2021. It discharged the accused of all remaining charges—rape and POCSO—primarily on two grounds: delay in filing the FIR, and the possibility that the deceased girl was a major at the time of the alleged offence.

The father appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court found the High Court's reasoning deeply flawed.

First, the delay. The High Court said the father had taken too long to report the rape. The Supreme Court rejected this outright. "Delay in registration of FIR cannot form the basis for discharging an accused of the offence of rape at the charge-framing stage," the bench held. The effect of delay on the prosecution's case is a matter for trial, not for a pre-trial discharge. A father who discovers his daughter's pregnancy only when she is taken to hospital, watches her give birth, and then loses her to suicide—that man is not acting with the clock-watching precision of a police manual. The court recognised that trauma and shock explain delay. More fundamentally, the question of whether the delay harmed the accused's defence is something a trial judge evaluates after hearing evidence, not something a revision court decides by reading the FIR alone.

Second, the age issue. The High Court had speculated that the deceased might have been a major, based on some document or inference. The Supreme Court said no. "Determination of the exact age of a victim at the time of the alleged offence is a factual question that must be resolved through evidence at trial," the bench observed. It cannot be conclusively decided at the charge-framing stage. The POCSO Act exists precisely to protect children; if there is a dispute about age, the trial must determine it with medical evidence, school records, and other proof—not a revision judge's hunch.

Why the High Court overstepped its role

The core of the Supreme Court's reasoning lies in the limits of revisional jurisdiction. A High Court exercising powers under Section 397/401 CrPC cannot weigh the correctness or sufficiency of evidence at the charge stage. It can only examine whether, assuming the prosecution's allegations to be true, the ingredients of the offence are prima facie made out.

This is not a new principle. The Supreme Court cited its own precedents—Amit Kapoor v. Ramesh Chander (2012) and State of Delhi v. Gyan Devi (2000)—to reiterate that quashing of a charge is an exception to the rule of continuous prosecution. It should be exercised only in the rarest of rare cases. The High Court in this case did not apply that standard. It acted as if it were conducting a mini-trial, assessing evidence and drawing inferences about delay and age that belonged to the trial judge.

The Supreme Court was blunt: the High Court order was "perverse." It represented a "premature assessment of evidence at the charge stage." The bench restored the trial court's charge-framing order of December 18, 2020, and directed that the accused be put on trial.

What this means for criminal trials

For practitioners, the judgment is a clear instruction: a revision court cannot substitute its own assessment of evidence for the trial court's prima facie view. The charge-framing stage under Section 228 CrPC (the stage where a judge decides whether there is enough material to put an accused on trial) requires only a strong suspicion that the accused committed the offence. It does not require proof beyond reasonable doubt. That comes later, at trial.

Delay in FIR registration is a factor that a trial court considers when evaluating the prosecution's case—but it is not a ground to shut down a rape case before trial begins. Similarly, the victim's age, when disputed, must be determined through evidence, not through judicial guesswork in a revision petition.

THE PLAY: If you are defending a rape or POCSO case at the revision stage, do not ask the High Court to weigh evidence or decide factual disputes like delay or age—those arguments belong at trial, and a revision judge who entertains them is inviting the Supreme Court to reverse the order.

The girl delivered a baby and then hanged herself in the same hospital room. The Supreme Court sent the case back to trial. The accused will now have to face the evidence.