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20. The Hon'ble Supreme Court has also held in the case of Lallu Manjhi and another Vs. State of Jharkhand; reported in (2003) 2 SCC 401, that witness could be categorised in three categories namely; (i) wholly reliable, (ii) wholly unreliable, and (iii) neither wholly reliable nor wholly unreliable. In case of the third category, Hon'ble Supreme Court has laid down that, 17 apeal606.17.odt corroboration of evidence of such witness is extremely necessary. In the present case, at the most, the prosecution witnesses, particularly prosecutrix (PW4) herself, fall in the category of the witness that was neither wholly reliable nor wholly unreliable. In this situation, corroboration of her evidence becomes crucial for proving the prosecution case. In the present case, there is lack of evidence to corroborate the claim made by the prosecutrix (PW4) and Shila (PW2) as well as Sneha (PW5) who claimed to be the eye witnesses to the said incident. The evidence of Sneha (PW5) is rendered unreliable due to crucial admission made in her cross- examination that police had read over her statement to her before deposing in the Court. The law in this regard, as laid down by a series of judgments, shows that if a witness is permitted to stealthily refresh his or her memory before entering the Court and deposing then the evidence of such a witness is rendered unreliable. This dictum has been laid down as far back as in the ahiruddin Vs. judgment of the Privy Council reported in Z Emperor; reported in AIR 1947 PC 75 and in one of the recent judgments of Division Bench of this Court in the case of Suresh s/o Purushottam Ashtankar, supra. In the said case, while approving the view taken by a learned Single Judge of this Court, the Division bench has held as under:

18 apeal606.17.odt "32. In para 10 of the said reported Judgment, the learned Single Judge found that Pundlik (PW-1) has admitted that the police had read over his statement to him and also told him to tender the evidence as per his statement. The learned Single Judge has observed thus:

"There would indeed be nothing wrong in the witness refreshing his memory, but that ought to be done before the Court and not outside the Court. In order to test the veracity of a witness, he would be required to recollect the incident out of his own memory and should he falter on some material aspect, he could be allowed to refresh his memory with reference to the contemporaneous records of the incident created by the police. It would not be permissible for such witness to stealthily refresh his memory before entering the Court and deposing about the entire evidence giving minute details as if he was reeling them out from his memory. Therefore, the objection to the reliability of evidence of PW-2 Prabhakar taken by learned Counsel for the appellant is valid".