In Brief
A peon employed at a Sub-Registrar's office was convicted of misappropriating public funds (Rs. 92,225) across three separate periods. Although tried in three different cases for convenience, the Supreme Court held that the offences constituted a single transaction. The Court exercised its discretion under Section 427(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code to direct that the sentences imposed in all three cases run concurrently rather than consecutively, emphasizing that artificial splitting of one transaction into multiple prosecutions should not result in disproportionate cumulative punishment.
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