New Delhi, June 6 -- A person who challenges their conviction cannot be punished more harshly in return, the Supreme Court has ruled, holding that a court cannot enhance a sentence in an appeal filed by the accused unless the prosecution or complainant has independently sought a stiffer jail term. The ruling reinforces a key safeguard in criminal jurisprudence that the right to appeal should not carry the risk of harsher punishment, leaving an accused worse off, and that courts cannot exercise revisional powers on its own motion to increase punishment without a formal challenge. A bench of justices BV Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma, in a judgment on Wednesday, clarified the limits of appellate powers, underlining that enhancing the sentence in an appeal filed solely by the accused would amount to penalising a person for exercising their statutory and constitutional right to appeal. "The appellate court, in an appeal filed by the accused, cannot while maintaining the conviction enhance the sentence...particularly, when no appeal or revision has been filed either by the State, victim or complainant for seeking enhancement of sentence," said the bench, setting aside the conviction and five-year sentence of a man for abetment to suicide. The ruling came in a case from Tamil Nadu, where a man convicted by a trial court for offences under Sections 354 (assault or criminal force to outrage modesty) and 448 (house trespass) of the Indian Penal Code had approached the Madras high court seeking relief. However, high court not only upheld his conviction but convicted him under Section 306 (abetment to suicide) -- a charge on which he had been acquitted at trial -- and sentenced him to five years' rigorous imprisonment in September 2021....