The question here is whether the court will take cognizance (or whether still the accused is liable to be prosecuted) of the offence after the lapse of 4 years or more from the date of commencement of the offence.
The code under section 468 has put a bar (or limitation) that after a lapse of a "time period", the accused cannot be prosecuted...OR has laid down the procedure to compute the time period after which the accused cannot be prosecuted.
Now the question is how to compute the time period of limitation?
The same has been given in the same code i.e u/s 468 but has been over ruled by the judgement sited above mentioned judgement - Japani sahoo Vs Chandra Sekar Mohanty.
CrPC 469 Talks about the commencement of the time period and 468 Talks about calculating the limiting period.
and CrPC 470 talks about the time period that has to be excluded while calculating the time period of limitation mentioned in CrPC 468.
Now the Apex court in the above mentioned judgement has mentioned, over ruling the above mentioned process of computation or the time limit after which the accused cannot be prosecuted.
The time limit, shall commence as mentioned in section 469 CrpC but the period ends when the offence was made "official" in the form of any complaint to the police or some appropriate application in the court of Law.
If the time differerencebetween the date of commencement of the offence or or any instance when the offence came to be known to the complainant and the date when he filed the Divorce petition mentioning the allegations falls under the mandate mentioned in section 468 CrPC..the the complaint may be accepted.
Gautam