Legal provisions regarding commencement of the period of limitation under section 469 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
(a) On the date of the offence; or
(b) Where the commission of the offence was not known to the person aggrieved by the offence or to any police officer, the first day on which such offence comes to the knowledge of such person or to any police officer, whichever is earlier; or
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c) Where it is known by whom the offence was committed, the first day on which the identity of the offender is known to the aggrieved by the offence or to the police officer making investigation into the offence, whichever is earlier.
According to sub-section (2) of Section 469 of the Code, in computing the period of limitation, the day from which such period is to be computed shall be excluded.
A person aggrieved’ in Section 469(l)(b) of the Code, means a man who has suffered a legal grievance, a man against whom a decision has been pronounced which has wrongfully deprived him of something or wrongfully refused him something or wrongfully affected his title to something.
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The time must be deemed to run from the moment when there is knowledge and not from any hypothetical point on the assumption of knowledge. As a general rule, the period of limitation begins to run from the date of the commission of the offence and to this general rule two exceptions are provided in Section 469(1) of the Code.
One is where the aggrieved party or the police was not aware of the commission of the offence and the second is where the identity of the offender was not known. In computing the period, the first day shall be excluded.
It is held that the fact that clauses (a), (b), (c) of Section 469(1) of the Code are disjunctive indicates different commencement points of limitation depending on the fact of each case. One and the same uniform point of commencement of the period of limitation cannot be the object of these three different clauses disjunctively separate from each other.
The cognizance of an offence cannot be taken after the period of limitation, commencing from the date of knowledge.