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11. Mr. Sekhar Basu, on taking us through the order being No. 41 dated 25.07.2002 and subsequent order of that date, evidence of the witnesses and on referring the decisions and advanced argument contending that barring five convicts viz B. Manju, Arunangshu Bhanja, Debasis Dutta, Abdul Rouf and Kaushik Chakraborty who were subsequently granted bail, all the convicts are behind the bars from the time of their arrest, that though one Mr. Gautam Chowdhury was engaged as State Defence Lawyer to defend his four clients S. Balaraju, B. Krishna Rao, L. Kankar Rao and R. Chinni @ R. Rambabu, due to some personal predicament he did not turn up, for which one Mr. Dipankar Das was engaged as State Defence Lawyer, but he too did not turn up and so as his said clients were undefended all along and as there was patent denial of legal aid and they had no opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses, the evidence adduced against them cannot be accepted. It was his further contention that when 24 material witnesses out of 39 were already examined, Mr. Chowdhury was asked by the ld. Court below to take part in cross-examination which was really unmeaningful. Mr. Basu on drawing Court's attention to Order No. 6 dated 22.04.2002 and question No. 4 of cross-examination of accused L. Kankar Rao under Section 313 Cr.PC contended that Mr. Chowdhury was engaged as State Defence Lawyer on that very date but he was not given a reasonable time for preparation even on the request of ld. Special P.P. which might be the cause of declining of Mr. Chowdhury to act as a State Defence Lawyer and though the said question No. 4 was put to accused L. Kankar Rao @ Kanna during examination under Section 313 Cr.PC that he misbehaved with the next State Defence Lawyer Mr. Dipankar Das, there is no material on record in this regard that either he or any of the other 3 accused misbehaved with Mr. Das. Mr. Basu on referring to the cross-examination of P. W. 5, P. W. 8, P.W. 9 etc. further contended that his another client Kunwar Singh @ Seru @ Madan was also not offered to cross-examine. More or less similar is the argument advanced by Mr. Dutt contending that since his clients Rajinder Singh @ Manu and Bijoy Singh moved before the Apex Court they were not in a position to cross-examine the witnesses and they were not offered to cross-examine thereby depriving them of fair trial in breach of fundamental procedure. Mr. Asimesh Goswami, ld. Additional P.P., on the other hand, contended that in compliance with the provision of Section 304 Cr.P.C., Mr. Gautam Chowdhury was engaged as State Defence Lawyer and since due to personal predicament he could not conduct the case. Mr. Dipankar Das was engaged as the next State Defence Lawyer but as accused Chinni and other three accused persons did not avail of the opportunity, they cannot be permitted to take advantage of their own wrong and complain that they were undefended. Now, Section 304 Cr.PC places on a statutory footing the right of the accused without sufficient means to engage a lawyer to be defended at the expense of the State in regard to Sessions trials with a provision also enabling the State Govt. to extend this right by notification to any class of trials before other Courts in the State. The State is under a mandate to provide free legal aid to an accused who is unable to secure legal service on account of indigence or indommunicado situation provided the accused does not object, and whatever is necessary for this purpose has to be done by the State . The State Govt. cannot engage a defence lawyer without ascertaining the wishes of the accused and without giving him any choice in selecting his lawyer . Particular attention should be paid to appoint competent Advocate, equal to handling the complex cases, not patronising jestures to raw entrants to the Bar. Sufficient time and complete papers should also be made available so that the Advocate chosen may serve the cause of justice with all ability at his command and the accused may feel confident that the counsel has had sufficient time and material to defend him properly, as was observed by the Apex Court in . In other words, under-trial prisoners should be provided legal representation by fairly competent lawyers at the cost of the State [1981 Cr.LJ 481(SC)]. Here, when accused R. Chinni and three others refused to sign vokalatnama in favour of the State Defence Lawyer Mr. Dipankar Das, it shows their lack of confidence in him and as such did not accept him, Moreover, a mere formal compliance with the said provision of Section 304 cannot be expected to carry out the raison d'etre of the provision. No hard and fast rule can be laid down as to the time which must elapse between the appointment of the counsel and the beginning of the trial; but on the circumstances of each case, the Court of Sessions must ensure that the time granted to the counsel is sufficient to prepare for the defence. When the counsel was appointed just before the trial started, it is clear that there was failure to comply with the requirements of the rule of procedure in this behalf . In the case on hand, the State Defence lawyer Sri Chowdhury was appointed just before starting of the trial and virtually no time was granted to him even at the request of the ld. Special P.P. or to the next State Defence lawyer Sri Das to prepare himself. As discussed earlier, not only sufficient time but also complete papers should be made available to the lawyer to serve the cause of justice. There is nothing to suggest in this case that all papers were made available either to Mr. Chowdhury or to Mr. Das. Accordingly, there cannot be moment's doubt to accept that there was total failure to comply with the requirements of the rule of procedure contained in the said provision.

20. Accordingly, the aforesaid appeals heard analogously be allowed on contest. The impugned judgment and order of conviction and sentence of all the appellants passed by Mr. I.A. Shah in Sessions Trial Case No. XVII/March, 2002 & Sessions Trial Case No. XLVIII/ May, 2002 on 31.08.2002 be set aside. The case be remanded to the ld. Court below with a direction to comply with the provision of Section 304 Cr.PC, in respect of the accused persons who are undefended followed by giving opportunity to those accused persons only as mentioned in the body of the judgment to cross-examine the prosecution witnesses and then examination of the accused persons under Section 313 Cr.PC strictly in accordance with the provisions of law and in the light of the observations made above and thereafter an opportunity to the defence to adduce evidence in support of its case and then to conclude the trial within a period of three months from the date of receipt of the record.