Due to some untoward circumstances, Varenya Ltd could not hold Annual General Meeting (AGM) within due date. Audited Financial Statements along with Auditors' Report were not placed at the meeting and later Company faile

Section 220 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC) provides the provisions relating to single trial for more than one offence. If, in one series of acts so connected together as to form the same transaction, more offences than one are committed by the same person, he may be charged with, and tried at one trial, for every offence. Section 220 (1) of CrPC could be used when different offences committed by a single person or same persons and the trial could be a combined and held as a single trial. The Calcutta High Court in Madan Gopal Dey and Anor. v. State and Anor. held that if several offences are committed in the course of the same transaction, section 235 of CrPC would authorize their joinder for the purpose of a single trial. Continuity of action, therefore, seems to be very important test in the matter. The substance of charges framed is that they failed to hold AGM and that they had failed to place the Audited Financial Statements at the meeting and they had further failed to file with the Registrar the annual return and copies of Financial Statements within the specified periods following the annual general meeting. The requirement of the law in these regards fall into a pattern and the action that is to be satisfy those requirements carries a sense of continuity in the matter of the administration of the company. The defaults and omissions in the present cases constitute a series of acts which are so connected as to form the same transaction and as such whatever offences might have been committed in the course of that transaction are liable to be joined together under section 235 of CrPC for the purpose of single trial. Hence, it can be said that offences committed by Varenya Limited can be clubbed in single trial. However, they cannot be treated as a single offence, as section 220 provides for a single trail and not for combining of offences.