High Court set aside the Magistrate's order rejecting the discharge application, holding that the Investigating Officer suffered dereliction of duty by failing to examine the victim and witnesses, leading to a charge sheet based on hearsay.
The impugned order dated 15.02.2022 setting aside the discharge application was quashed.
This page shows the compact analysis of this judgement. The full analysis — procedural history, issue-by-issue holdings with ratio and obiter, advocates, and paragraph-level evidence for every claim — is being added to the record in batches and will appear here when this judgement has been through it.
Form J(1) IN THE HIGH COURT AT CALCUTTA Criminal Revisional Jurisdiction Appellate Side
Present : The Hon’ble Justice Bibek Chaudhuri
CRR 1205 of 2022
Indranuj Chowdhury Vs.
The State of West Bengal & Anr.
Mr. Moyukh Mukherjee Mr. Abhijit Singh
Mr. Suvasis Saha
….for the petitioner
Mr. Madhusudan Sur, APP
Mr. Dipankar Paramanick …for the State
Item No.11
Heard & Judgment on: 08.09.2022
Bibek Chaudhuri, J.
February, 2022 passed by the learned Judicial Magistrate, 1st
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Court at Barrackpore in G.R. Case No.7954 of 2019 rejecting an application under Section 239 of the Code of Criminal Procedure filed by the petitioner praying for discharging him from the case on the ground of absence of any material to frame charge against the accused/petitioner.
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Investigating Officer conducted investigation and finally submitted charge sheet against the petitioner under Sections 342/323/506 of the Indian Penal Code read with Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act.
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from the clutches of the petitioner. No student of the said school was examined. Even the victim girl was not examined. The Investigating Officer also did not pray for recording statement of the victim girl under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Charge sheeted witnesses Tapas Gayen, Himangshu Mondal, Bijoy Rajak, Pabitra Sarkar are hearsay witnesses. They did not see the incident.
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the copy of this order against S.I. Sanjay Naskar. The Commissioner of Police is further directed to inform this Court about the action taken by him against the above named police officer within seven days from the date of receipt of server copy of this order.
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of.
(Bibek Chaudhuri, J.)
3 issues framed by the court
Whether the impugned order rejecting the discharge application should be set aside due to glaring dereliction of duty by the Investigating Officer.
Whether the Magistrate should be directed to recall the applicant and pass an order on continuance of proceedings.
Whether departmental action should be initiated against the Investigating Officer for failure to examine the victim and witnesses.
3 provisions across 3 enactments
Indranuj Chowdhury
The State of West Bengal
Bibek Chaudhuri
As recorded by the court registry
Judgements on the same questions, provisions and authorities, from every court
