In a significant procedural challenge striking at the heart of fair trial rights, the Rajasthan High Court at Jodhpur has stepped in to correct what it found to be a serious judicial error in a sessions trial stemming from a 2020 road rage and assault case. At stake is whether accused persons, facing grave charges including attempted culpable homicide under Section 308 IPC, can be denied access to a material medical witness simply because the prosecution chose to leave him off its witness list. The Court trained its lens on a fundamental question: does a trial court have an independent duty to summon witnesses essential to justice, or can it hide behind prosecutorial discretion as an excuse for inaction?
The controversy began on September 9, 2020, when a vehicular collision between the complainant Bhagwati Lal Suthar and another vehicle triggered an altercation in which Suthar and one Vinod Kumar Jain sustained injuries. An FIR was lodged, and after investigation, the accused-petitioners were charge-sheeted for a battery of offences including attempted culpable homicide, grievous hurt, and wrongful confinement. As the sessions trial before the District & Sessions Judge, Salumber progressed, with 18 of 21 prosecution witnesses already examined, a critical gap surfaced: Dr. Sanjay Shah, the physician who had medically examined the injured Vinod Kumar Jain and authored key medical documents already on record, had never been cited or produced as a witness.
This gap became legally explosive when the first Investigating Officer, examined as witness, openly admitted during cross-examination that the medical opinion on the injury reports could only be furnished by the doctor himself, not by the investigating police. Armed with this admission, the accused filed an application under Section 311 CrPC to summon Dr. Shah, arguing his evidence was indispensable, particularly since the defence contended that the medical report itself indicated the death resulted from a stroke, not assault, potentially demolishing the Section 308 charge entirely. The trial court rejected the application on January 15, 2026, reasoning that witness selection was solely the prosecution's prerogative, a conclusion the petitioners challenged before the High Court as a fundamental misreading of the law.
Justice presiding over the matter found the trial court's reasoning not merely flawed but contrary to the settled and mandatory character of Section 311 CrPC, which does not merely permit but obliges a court to summon a witness whose evidence is essential to a just decision. Surveying a trilogy of Supreme Court precedents, Rajaram Prasad Yadav, Varsha Garg, and the recent K.P. Tamilmaran, the Court underscored that a trial court is never a passive spectator in the pursuit of truth. Applying those principles to the facts, the Court found Dr. Shah's testimony indispensable: his medical documents were already on record, the investigating officer had expressly disclaimed any ability to interpret them, and the defence had directly challenged the nature and cause of the alleged injuries.
The Court delivered a pointed rebuke to the trial court's logic, "Merely because the prosecution did not cite the said doctor as a witness cannot be a ground to deny the petitioners the opportunity to summon such a material expert witness, when his evidence appears to be relevant and necessary for the just decision of the case." Holding that the January 15, 2026 order "cannot be sustained," the Court quashed it, allowed the petition, and directed the trial court to summon Dr. Sanjay Shah, permit full examination and cross-examination, and thereafter proceed expeditiously.
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