Criminal revision challenging the trial court's appeal to summon a witness to complete inquest proceedings previously omitted due to oversight. The High Court rejected the plea of lacuna as an oversight correctable without prejudice.
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.
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IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH
Crl. Rev. No. 1782 of 2009 Date of Decision: 17.7.2009
Mata Parshad & Ors.
.. Petitioners
Vs.
State of UT, Chandigarh.
.. Respondent.
CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE ARVIND KUMAR,
**Present:Mr. R.S. Hooda and Mr. Pawan Hooda, Advocates for the petitioners. *****
ARVIND KUMAR, J.
The present petitioners are facing trial in case FIR No.37 dated 12.3.2006, under Sections 304-B read with Section 120-B IPC, Police Station Sector 3 Chandigarh. They are aggrieved with the order dated 27.5.2009 by dint of which the trial court allowed the application of the prosecution filed under Section 311 Cr.P.C. and re-summoned PW.7 SI Rajdeep Singh.
Heard.
The plea that the application has been filed by the prosecution just to fill up the lacuna, is not tenable. It emerges out from the records that part of the examination-in-chief of PW.7 SI Rajdeep Singh was recorded on 22.5.2008, but it was not concluded for want of original inquest proceedings carried out by him while investigating the case, which were sent to Forensic Lab along with parcels. However, while entering into the witness box at a later stage, inadvertently, the inquest proceedings were not put to him during his examination-in-chief and due to over-sight, his cross examination straightway was commenced and concluded. A lacuna in prosecution is not to be equated with the fall out of an oversight committed by a public prosecutor during trial, either in producing relevant materials or in eliciting relevant answers from witnesses. The adage 'to err is human' is the
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recognition of the possibility of making mistakes to which humans are proned. But no party in a trial can be fore-closed from correcting errors. If proper evidence was not adduced or a relevant material was not brought on record due to any inadvertence, the Court should be magnanimous in permitting such mistakes to be rectified. After all, function of the criminal Court is administration of criminal justice and not to count errors committed by the parties or to find out and declare who among the parties performed better.
It is apparent from the impugned order that the Court below finding the examination of PW.7 as essential for the just and proper decision of the case, exercised the discretionary powers vested in it by dint of Section 311 Cr.P.C. and rightly allowed the application of the prosecution. Even otherwise no prejudice would have been caused to the petitioners by allowing of the said application, since they have an opportunity to crossexamine the witness. Furthermore, the objection that photo copy of a document is not permissible in evidence, can be raised by the petitioners at the relevant time of examination of PW.7, which shall be decided by the trial court, as per law.
In view of the above, there is no illegality or perversity in the approach adopted by the learned trial court in allowing the application of the prosecution under Section 311 Cr.P.C. Accordingly, the present petition stands dismissed being without merits.
(ARVIND KUMAR) JUDGE
July 17,2009 Jiten
2 issues framed by the court
Whether the re-summoning of a witness for post-facto completion of inquest proceedings recorded as a lacuna under Section 311 Cr.P.C. constitutes perversity in the impugned order allowing the applicat
Whether allowing prosecution to correct an inadvertent omission in examination-in-chief causes prejudice to the accused if they retain the right to cross-examine.
1 provisions across 1 enactments
Mata Parshad & Ors.
State of UT, Chandigarh
ARVIND KUMAR
As recorded by the court registry
Judgements on the same questions, provisions and authorities, from every court
