Army has to follow rules in court-martial proceedings: Supreme Court

Army has to give a mandatory time window of four days to a jawan before court-martialling him for any offence, the Supreme Court has ruled.

Rejecting the Centre’s argument that the Rule 34 of the army in 1954, which mandates a 96 hours gap between the time of charge and actual trial, was merely directory and not mandatory, the Supreme Court ruled that a jawan has to be given the mandatory 96 hours time.

The apex court made the observation in a judgement dismissing the Union Government’s appeal, which had challenged the acquittal of A K Pandey of 12 Corps Signal Regiment, Jodhpur, who was dismissed from service and sentenced to three years in jail by court martial proceedings on November 6, 1995.

“A trial before the General Court Martial (army court) entails grave consequences. The accused may be sentenced to suffer imprisonment. He may be dismissed from service. The consequences that may follow from non-observance of the time interval provided in Rule 34 being grave and severe, we hold, as it must be that the said provision is absolute and mandatory,” a three judge bench of Justices B N Agrawal, Aftab Alam and R M Lodha said.

The charge against Pandey was that he had illegally sold a country-made pistol and one round of ammunition to another signalman J N Narsimilu of the same unit.