Early Times Report
Jammu, Jun 2: Dismissing a criminal revision filed by an ETT scam accused against the order of special judge anti-corruption, high court judge Tashi Rabstan today said the accused can't demand anything that is extraneous to the chargesheet'.
The order of special judge anti-corruption said accused Manish Suri did not have the inherent right to demand copies of all what was sought to be relied upon in the chargesheet. Suri had filed the criminal revision against this order.
Justice Rabstan, after hearing the two sides, observed that the accused could not demand anything that was extraneous to the chargesheet, rather the documents which were sought to be relied upon by the prosecution.
1682 files of various ETT institutions have been seized by the investigating agency, but senior AAG told the court that only a few of them were related to the present case. "Section 233 of CrPC, read with exception contained in section 234, clearly mandates that only three offences of same kind committed within a period of one year can be tried at one trial. So, if the crime branch is seized of further investigation in respect of different years, it has no option but to file separate charge sheets. Therefore, this court is not inclined to take a view other than the one taken by the trial court so far as the bifurcation of charge sheets in accordance with the procedure contained in chapter XIX is concerned," Justice Rabstan observed.
"No doubt, the accused has a right to have copies of documents on which reliance is sought to be placed by the prosecution, but he cannot claim as a matter of right anything which is extraneous to the charge sheet. Although this court, vide its November 26, 2015 order passed in criminal revision No.58/2015, had directed CB to supply the copies of missing and deficient documents as sought by the petitioner on payment under rule, but that did not mean anything extraneous to the charge sheet. However, in the May 20, 2016 affidavit filed by CB SSP, it has been specifically deposed that the case property in the charge sheet filed against the accused stands supplied to him free of cost," the court observed.
With these observations, the court did not find any reason to upset the view taken by the trial court and dismissed the criminal revision. |
