Compounding of Offences
Definition
A statutory process by which a complainant agrees to withdraw a criminal complaint, ending the prosecution, available only for offences the legislature has marked compoundable.
Related terms
- Bailable Offence
- An offence for which the accused has a legal right to be released on bail once the required bond is furnished; the...
- Cognizable Offence
- An offence for which a police officer may arrest without a warrant and start investigating without a magistrate's prior order, listed as...
- Non-Bailable Offence
- An offence for which release before trial is not a right; a court weighs the gravity of the charge, flight risk and...
- Non-Cognizable Offence
- An offence for which a police officer may not arrest without a warrant, and cannot investigate without a magistrate's order or a...
- Felony
- A common law category for a serious offence, historically carrying severe punishment, used as a rough comparison point for a cognizable, non-bailable...
- Felony and Misdemeanour
- A two-tier classification, still used across most of the United States, that typically separates offences by whether the maximum sentence exceeds one...
- Misdemeanour
- A common law category for a less serious offence, used as a rough comparison point for a non-cognizable, bailable offence.
- Summary Offence
- A minor offence tried quickly without a full trial procedure, often overlapping in practice with offences that are also bailable and compoundable.
Explained in these topics
- Classifying Offences: Cognizable, Bailable and Compoundable
- Cognizable, Bailable and Compoundable Offences (UGC-NET Unit V)A process by which a complainant withdraws a criminal complaint, ending the prosecution on that charge as though the accused had been acquitted.