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In exercise of the power conferred by s. 91 a summons can be issued by the Court to a person in whose possession or power any document or other thing considered necessary or desirable for the purpose of any investigation, inquiry, trial or other proceeding under the Code calling upon him to produce the document or thing at the time and place to be mentioned in the summons. On the advent of the Constitution, and especially in view of the provision contained in Art. 20(3), Courts were faced with a problem whether the person referred to in s. 91(1) of the Code (s 94 of old Code) would include an accused. In other words, the question was whether a summons can be addressed to the accused calling upon him to produce any document which may be in his possession or power and which is necessary or desirable for the purpose of an investigation, inquiry, trial, etc. in which such person was an accused person. The wider question that was raised soon after the enforcement of the Constitution was whether search of the premises occupied or in possession of a person accused of an offence or seizure of anything therefrom would violate the immunity from self-incrimination enacted in Article 20(3). In M. P. Sharma & others v. Satish Chandra, District Magistrate, Delhi & ors.,(ll) the contention put forth was that a search to obtain document for investigation into an offence is- a compulsory procuring of incriminatory evidence from the accused himself and is, therefore, hit by Art. 20(3) as unconstitutional and illegal. A specific reference was made to ss. 94 and 96 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1898 ('old Code' for short), both of which are re-enacted in almost identical language as ss. 91 and 93 in the new Code, in support of the submission that a seizure of documents on search is in the contemplation or law a compelled production of documents. A Constitution Bench of 8 judges of this Court unanimously negatived this contention observing:

Section 93, however, also envisages situations other than one contemplated by s. 93(1)(a) for issuance of a search warrant. It must be made distinctly clear that the present search warrant is not issued under s. 93 ( 1 ) (a) .

Section 93(1) (b) comprehends a situation where a search warrant may be issued to procure a document or thing not known to the Court to be in the possession of any person. In other words, a general search warrant may be issued to procure the document or thing and it can be recovered from any person who may be ultimately found in possession of it and it was not known to the Court that the person from whose possession it was found was in possession of it. In the present case the search warrant was to be executed at the office of the Sabha and it can be said that office bearers of the Sabha were the persons who were in possession of the documents in respect of which the search warrant was issued. Therefore, clause (b) of s. 93(1) would not be attracted.