Court caseAIR 1952 SC 75

Section 5(1) of the West Bengal Special Courts Act 1950 empowered the State Government to direct that any 'offences or classes of offences, or cases or classes of cases' be tried by a Special Court following a summary procedure that dispensed with committal proceedings, jury and several safeguards of the Criminal Procedure Code. Anwar Ali Sarkar and forty-nine others, accused of an armed raid on a factory at Dum Dum, were sent for trial to a Special Court under such a direction and convicted. The Calcutta High Court quashed the conviction as violative of Article 14 and the State appealed.

By six to one the appeal was dismissed. The majority held that Article 14 permits reasonable classification for the purposes of legislation, but the classification must be founded on an intelligible differentia distinguishing those grouped together from those left out, and the differentia must have a rational relation to the object of the Act. The preamble's reference to 'speedier trial' supplied no standard: the Act gave the executive an unfettered discretion to pick any case for a harsher procedure, so the classification was arbitrary. Patanjali Sastri CJ dissented, holding that the need for speedier trial of certain cases was a sufficient basis. In the companion case Kathi Raning Rawat the Saurashtra Ordinance, which specified the categories of offences, was upheld.