Gurugram: A case that began with 1.5 kilograms of khoya seized from a shop nearly three decades ago has finally ended, not with the man walking free of conviction, but with the Punjab and Haryana High Court deciding that he had already paid enough of a price.
Justice Deepak Manchanda, in an order dated July 16, upheld Jagdish Ram’s conviction under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, but reduced his six-month jail term to the period he had already spent behind bars, around two months and 20 days, on condition that he pay an enhanced fine of Rs 5,000 within two months.
The story goes back to 28 August 1998, when Dr J.S. Bains, acting under the supervision of the Hoshiarpur District Health Officer, inspected Jagdish Ram’s premises at around 1.30 pm. An independent witness, Kapil Kumar, was roped in, and the team found the shopkeeper in possession of 1.5 kg of khoya meant for sale.
When the sample was sent for analysis, the milk fat content came back at just 4.95 per cent, far below the mandated minimum of 20 per cent. The khoya was then declared sub-standard and Jagdish Ram was prosecuted.
A local court convicted him in 2001 and sentenced him to six months of rigorous imprisonment along with a fine of Rs 1,000.
An appeal before the Fast Track Court in Hoshiarpur was dismissed in 2008, upholding the trial court’s order. That is when Jagdish Ram moved the High Court.
‘I’m not fighting the case any more, just the sentence’
By the time the matter reached Justice Manchanda’s court decades later, Jagdish Ram’s counsel, Advocate Sarvesh Kumar Gupta, chose not to contest the conviction itself.
Instead, he told the court his client had a good case on the merits but was willing to let that go; his only plea was for leniency in sentencing.
The arguments made on Jagdish Ram’s behalf painted the picture of a man who had already moved on from the very trade that got him into trouble: he was now old, no longer in the khoya business, and had no other criminal case against him in all these years.
He had also already spent about three months in jail before being released on bail in 2008, when the High Court suspended his sentence while the revision petition was pending.
The State of Punjab opposed the plea, producing a custody certificate dated 13 July this year to counter it.
A law with almost no room to manoeuvre
What makes this case legally significant is that the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act leaves judges little discretion with sentencing.
Under Section 20AA of the Act, the benefit of probation, available under the general Probation of Offenders Act or Section 360 of the CrPC, does not apply to someone convicted under this law, unless the convict was under 18 at the time of the offence.
Jagdish Ram was around 37 when he committed the offence in 1998, and 40 by the time he was convicted in 2001. That ruled out probation entirely.
The court also noted that, as settled law stands, the minimum sentence prescribed under the PFA Act cannot simply be reduced at will.
So how did the court still give him relief?
The answer lies in a separate legal principle — the right to a speedy trial, protected under Article 21 of the Constitution.
Justice Manchanda invoked a string of precedents, including the Supreme Court’s landmark Hussainara Khatoon judgment from 1980, and more recent rulings, to hold that when a case drags on for years that delay itself becomes a valid ground for tempering the sentence, even if the conviction must stand.
In this instance, the case stretched out for close to 28 years after the offence and 18 years after the man was granted bail.
The court leaned particularly on a recent Supreme Court judgment, Israfil @ Pappu @ Naimuddin Khan vs State of Madhya Pradesh (2026), which held that long, drawn-out criminal proceedings amount to a punishment of their own, with the uncertainty, the social stigma, the years spent under a legal cloud.
It added that courts should account for this while deciding how much jail time, if any, still needs to be served.
The Final Order
Weighing all of this, the high court held that sending Jagdish Ram back to jail to complete the remainder of a decades-old sentence would serve little purpose.
His conviction stands, but his punishment has effectively been converted into the time he already spent in custody, backed by a higher fine.
The court has made it clear, though, that this relief comes with a string attached: if the Rs 5,000 fine is not deposited with the trial court within two months, the original jail sentence will revive, and Jagdish Ram will have to go back to serve out what remains of it.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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