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6. The investigation was commenced by PW17-M.Chinnathambi, Deputy Superintendent of Police. Accused No.1-Raja, Accused No.2- Govindraj, Accused No.3-Palani, Accused No.4-Vandikaran @ Murugan, Accused No.5-Elumalai and Accused No.7- Arumugam were arrested on 21.06.1999 while Accused No.6-Chinnapaiyan surrendered himself before the Magistrate on 22.06.1999, who remanded him to judicial custody on the same day. On 27.06.1999 requisition was made by the Investigating Officer for conducting Test Identification Parade (TIP for short) insofar as all the arrested accused were concerned. On 28.6.1999 an application was made by the Investigating Officer seeking permission to take Accused No.6 – Chinnapaiyan in police custody. The permission was granted by the concerned Magistrate on 29.06.1999 to hold the TIP on 01.07.1999. The police custody of Accused No.6 was also given for 3 days from 01.07.1999.

Thereafter, the TIP was held on 01.07.1999, in which PWs 1 to 5 identified the concerned accused. The TIP was conducted in the presence and under the supervision of PW11-Boopalan, who was then working as Sub-Judge, Rani Pettai.

7. During the course of investigation, following recoveries were made from the concerned accused.

i) MO 18 wrist watch was recovered from Accused No.1 Criminal Appeal No. 740 of 2018 etc. Raja etc. vs. State by the Inspector of Police

16. Again, there is no hard and fast rule about the period within which the TIP must be held from the arrest of the accused. In certain cases, this Court considered delay of 10 days to be fatal while in other cases even delay of 40 days or more was not considered to be fatal at all. For instance, in Pramod Mandal v. State of Bihar1 the accused was arrested on 17.01.1989 and was put up for Test Identification on 18.02.1989, that is to say there was a delay of a month for holding the TIP. Additionally, there was only one identifying witness against the said accused. After dealing with the decisions of this Court in Wakil Singh v. State of Bihar2, Subhash v. State of Uttar Pradesh3 and Soni v. State of Uttar Pradesh4 in which benefit was conferred upon the accused because of delay in holding the TIP, this Court considered the line of cases taking a contrary view as under:

254. Even a TIP before a Magistrate is otherwise hit by Section 162 of the Code. Therefore, to say that a photo identification is hit by Section 162 is wrong. It is not a substantive piece of evidence. It is only by virtue of Section 9 of the Evidence Act that the same i.e. the act of identification becomes admissible in court. The logic behind TIP, which will include photo identification lies in the fact that it is only an aid to investigation, where an accused is not known to the witnesses, the IO conducts a TIP to ensure that he has got the right person as an accused. The practice is not borne out of procedure, but out of prudence. At best it can be brought under Section 8 of the Evidence Act, as evidence of conduct of a witness in photo identifying the accused in the presence of an IO or the Magistrate, during the course of an investigation.