PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 937
Criminal Procedure Code which defines what offences are compoundable and what offences are non-compoundable. My hon. friend will remember that there are altogether 511 sections in the Indian panel code, of them, 108 are taken up with purely declaratory matters, punishments, where the law would apply, general exceptions to the law, costs and so on and so forth. So, we shall cancel or deduct 106 out of 511. The sections which actually define offences are grossly about
Four hundred offences, acts and omissions are made offences by the Indian Penal Code. Out of this 400, how many are compoundable ? That is a matter which we must consider because under that lies the principle which is of importance. As I said, the only provision which defines what offences are compoundable or not is section 345 of the Criminal Procedure Code. I have made a little calculation—I am rather weak in mathematics but I believe I cannot be very far wrong in saying—that only 44 offences are compoundable out of the
The rest are non-compoundable. From this position, I deduce the conclusion that the principle of the criminal law is that an offence shall ordinarily not be compoundable and that these 44 are merely exceptions to the general rule. Out of the 44, 24 are compoundable without the permission of the magistrate and 20 are compoundable with the permission of the magistrate. So, really speaking, only 24 are compoundable offences. Now, are these offences indicated in this Bill compundable or not ? The Bill itself does not say so. I think there ought to be an express provision to this effect that any offence under this Bill, shall be non-compoundable. If my hon. friend does not propose to accept this suggestion, what would be the result ? The result would be this, that most of these offences will be offences in which hurt or grievous hurt would be caused. They could not be mere offences of show of force or anything less than that; they would be offences involving hurt, grievous hurt, violence and things of that sort. Now, if a magistrate were to apply sub-sections ( 1 ) or ( 2 ) of section
345—I do not want to weary my hon. friend by reading the two sub-sections of section 345 which define offences of this sort—he will find that the offences involve hurt. He will also see that a large majority of them which are made compoundable