Putting chargesheet in public domain may violate rights of accused, victims: Supreme Court

Tribune News Service

Satya Prakash

New Delhi, January 20

Holding that a chargesheet filed by an investigating agency was not a public document, the Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a PIL seeking a direction to all states to enable free public access to chargesheets and final reports filed by investigating agencies on their websites.

“If the relief as prayed in the present petition is allowed and all the chargesheets and relevant documents produced along with the chargesheets are put on the public domain or on the websites of the State Governments it will be contrary to the Scheme of the Criminal Procedure Code and it may as such violate the rights of the accused as well as the victim and/or even the investigating agency,” a Bench led by Justice MR Shah said.

“Therefore, the chargesheet/documents along with the chargesheet cannot be said to be public documents under Section 74 of the Evidence Act, reliance placed upon Sections 74 & 76 of the Evidence Act is absolutely misplaced,” the Bench said, dismissing a PIL filed by one Saurav Das.

Relying on the verdict in Youth Bar Association of India’s case – in which the top court had directed copies of FIRs to be published within 24 hours of their registration on the police websites or on the websites of state governments – the petitioner had demanded that charesheets too should be made public.

Das had sought chargesheets to be made public under Section 4(2) of the Right to Information Act which cast a duty upon the public officer/public authority to provide as much information suo moto to the public at regular intervals through various means of communications and to provide as much information as mentioned in Section 4(1)(b) of the RTI Act.

“Putting the FIR on the website cannot be equated with putting the charge sheets along with the relevant documents on the public domain and on the websites of the State Governments,” said the Bench which also included Justice C T Ravikumar.

After completion of the probe, the investigating officer files a final report under Section 173 of CrPC which can be either a chargesheet or a closure report. As per Section 207 CrPC, the investigating agency is required to furnish the copies of the charge sheet along with the relevant documents to be relied upon by the prosecution to the accused free of cost.

However, the top court dismissed the petition, saying it lacked merit.

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