Skip to main content
Indian Kanoon - Search engine for Indian Law
Document Fragment View
Matching Fragments
"Now
having heard the learned advocates for the respective
sides quite at length, it clearly appears to this Court that the
impugned order is per-se perverse and illegal. The learned
Magistrate was not conducting a "mock trial"!! The
case he was trying was a serious case under the Prohibition Act
wherein 400 tins of molasis valuing at Rs.l,90,002/were
seized. This is a serious offence against the Society as from
such molasis (rotten Gur)only the country liquor is prepared, which
in the past has resulted into several hooch tragedies taking heavy
toll of human lives and making many more surviving blind for
life. To view such an offence lightly and too technically and in
follow through mechanically acquit the accused is something quite
unbecoming of any learned Magistrate, which cannot be countenanced
for a while even. Once the court takes cognizance of any case, it
is its first and foremost duty to do justice and while doing the
same, it can take assistance of the prosecution.
Accordingly, if the prosecution renders desired assistance, well
and good, but in case if for whatever reasons it fails to render the
same, it is for the court to exert and assert its judicial powers
to compel the witnesses to remain present before the court at any
cost and see that the cause of justice do not suffer and fail on
account of the negligent prosecution. Turning to the facts of the
present case it is apparent that the complainant was a Police
Officer. Under the circumstances, it was the duty of the court to
see that in the first instance by issuing summons and
thereafter, warrant and even if that was not heeded to, by issuing
even non-bailable warrant, he was kept present before the Court and
examined in the overall interest of public. Not to discharge
this duty in the manner suggested above, at the cost of
repetition, it may once again be emphatically reiterated, stated
that it is serious dereliction of duty, which neither can be
countenanced lightly by the Administration of Justice nor can
the learned Magistrate expect Society to pardon him. It further
appears that the learned APP has also not taken the desired care in
conducting the trial and it was for this reason only that he was
summoned by this Court to remain present. On appearing before
this court Mr. Vasant Rana from the file pointed out that the
trial Court had once prepared summons against the complainant
Police Officer but for whatever reasons that remained on
the file and was never taken out
to be served upon the complainant. Now this circumstance on the
contrary is an indicator to show that the learned APP Mr.Vasant
Rana had not taken any further interest in the matter, though his
explanation was that because he was over-burdened with the work, he
could not discharge his duty to the desired extent. As
stated above, merely because the learned APP for whatever reasons
failed to evince the desired interest in keeping the complainant
present before the Court, this was certainly no ground for the
learned Magistrate to throw to winds his sense of duty, interest and
initiative in the matter of examining the complainant as has
been done in the instant case. If the learned Magistrate was of the
opinion that despite the fact that the to panch witnesses were
present in the court and the learned APP was not present to examine
them either he should have waited for the learned APP to come or
should have adjourned the case to some future date and in case if
the learned Magistrate was of the opinion that the learned APP was
in habit in not regularly attending the court, then he should
have drawn the attention of the concerned DSP and the learned
District Magistrate of the area. Be the case as it may, but the
fact remains that such short-circuit premature acquittal in a
serious case like the present one ought not to have been gifted
away on the flimsy excuse of prosecution not examining the
complainant where it was also plainly the duty of the learned
Magistrate to take necessary steps to examine him in order to
subserve the ends of justice. These glaring infirmities in the
conduct of trial positively make out the case of remanding the case
to the trial court for denovo trial. It is not possible for this
court to agree with the submission made by Mr. Dave that since
all the panchas have already failed to support the
prosecution, therefore, the solitary interested evidence of
Police Officer standing by itself would not be of any
consequential assistance to the prosecution and that the remanding
of the case would be an idle formality and waste of public
time. There are cases and cases where depending upon the overall
credibility of the evidence of the concerned Police Officer that
the same can as well be
relied upon despite the fact that the panchas had chosen not to
support the prosecution. It is indeed too premature at this stage
to say that the evidence of concerned Police Officer would
inspire the confidence of
the trial court or not. That all depends upon the honesty,
integrity, performance and capacity of the concerned Police
Officer to withstand the cross-examination at trial.