Court cannot alter, review its own judgement arbitrarily : SC

NEW DELHI: Courts cannot alter or review their own judgements or final order after it is signed, except to correct clerical or arithmetical mistakes, the Supreme Court has said while setting aside a Madhya Pradesh High Court order to quash criminal proceeding in a dowry case.

"As soon as the judgement is pronounced or order is made by the court, it becomes functus officio (court ceases to have control over the case and has)...no power to review, override, alter or interfere with it," a bench of justices C K Thakker and D K Jain observed.

The apex court passed the ruling while allowing an appeal filed by a woman Sunita Jain challenging the high court's decision to quash the criminal proceedings initiated against her husband Pawan Kumar Jain and his parents for alleged dowry harassment.

Power of quashing a criminal proceeding should be exercised very sparingly and with circumspection and that too in the rarest of rare cases, the apex court said while recalling its earlier ruling.

According to the bench the courts will not be justified in embarking upon an enquiry as to the reliability or genuineness or otherwise of the allegation made in the FIR or complaint by a person.

The apex court said the courts' power to exercise the extraordinary and inherent power do not confer an arbitrary jurisdiction in exercising such power as per whims and caprice.