Right to fair probe, trial meant for victim as well: HC

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 3

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has made it clear that the courts were not only required to ensure that the innocents went scot-free, but also to see that the real culprits were brought to book.

Justice Meenakshi I Mehta also ruled that the right to fair investigation and trial was not meant to be confined to the accused alone. The right stood equally extended to the victim as well.

Only one accused sent for trial

• An FIR was registered in July 2017 at the Sadar police station in Hansi under the provisions of the IPC and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
• A scuffle had taken place between some youngsters belonging to a Brahmin caste and Dalit community over their turn to get water.
• Cops, after completing probe, submitted charge-sheet, whereby only one accused was sent to face the trial, while declaring the remaining accused innocent

“The courts, being the most effective limb of the system of the administration of criminal justice, are supposed to be all the more conscious as well as cautious not only to the extent that an innocent person is not punished but also to ensure simultaneously that no real/actual offender or perpetrator of the crime is let to go scot-free,” Justice Mehta ruled.

The assertion came during the hearing of a bunch of two petitions pertaining to an order passed by Hisar Additional Sessions Judge in August 2018. One of the pleas was directed against the court’s decision to partly allow prosecuting agency’s application under Section 319 of the CrPC and summon six petitioners as additional accused to face trial along with a co-accused.

Justice Mehta ruled that it was explicit that the final report of the investigating agency by way of challan/charge-sheet regarding the innocence of a person in a case could not be taken as the gospel truth. The court was well within its power to separate the chaff from the grains to find out the truth regarding the culpability of any person not arrayed as an accused or not sent up to face the trial in a criminal case.

He added the impugned order passed by the trial court to the extent of summoning the petitioners as additional accused to face trial did not suffer from any illegality, irregularity, infirmity or perversity.