The single judge bench of the Tripura High Court held that the order passed by the trial court in rejecting the application of the accused to summon witnessess is not an interlocutory order rather it is a final order by which the further right of the accused to adduce further evidence has been finally closed by the Learned Trial Court below for which the revision petitioner is entitled to prefer revision under Section 397 read with Section 401 of Cr.P.C.
Brief facts
The factual matrix of the case is that the Petitioner/Accused filed an application for the summoning of the witnesses before the trial court for their examination in support of his defence for proper adjudication of the case. However, the trial court dismissed the Petition of the accused. Aggrieved by this, the present revision is filed by the accused in order to challenge the order passed by the learned trial court in rejecting the application.
Contentions of the Petitioner
The Petitioner contended that if these two witnesses are not examined then, the accused person would be highly prejudiced. However, the same is not considered by the trial court. The Petitioner relied upon the judgments titled Kalyani Baskar v. M.S. Sampoornam, T. Nagappa v. Y.R. Muralidhar, and Amar Nath v. State of Haryana.
Contentions of the Respondent
The Respondent contended that the Petitioner has challenged the interlocutory order in the revision petition which is not permissible by law under Section 397 of Cr.P.C. It was furthermore contended that at the time of filing the list of witnesses, the names of those witnesses were not furnished by the defence to the prosecution even though their names were not submitted before the Court so at this belated stage there was no scope on the part of Learned Court below to entertain the petition and by filing this revision petition. The Respondent relied upon the judgments titled Sethuraman v. Rajamanickam, and Girish Kumar Suneja v. Central Bureau of Investigation.
Observations of the court
The Hon’ble Court observed that from section 243 of the CrPC It appears that in order to summon a witness, the accused must apply to the court or the magistrate for a process to compel the witness to appear for examination or cross-examination. The magistrate will then issue the process unless he determines that the application should be denied on the grounds that it is being made to delay or defeat the ends of justice, and such grounds to be recorded in writing.
It was furthermore observed that the order passed by the trial court in rejecting the application of the accused to summon a witness is not an interlocutory order rather it is a final order by which the further right of the accused to adduce further evidence has been finally closed by the Learned Trial Court below for which the revision petitioner is entitled to prefer revision under Section 397 read with Section 401 of Cr.P.C.
Based on these considerations, the court was of the view that although it was the duty of the accused petitioner to submit the detailed list of witnesses at the time of submission before the Learned Trial Court below however, for proper adjudication of the present case, one opportunity should be given to the petitioner to take steps for issuing summons upon those witnesses.
The decision of the court
With the above direction, the court allowed the revision petition.
Case Title: Sri Arjun Debbarma V. The State of Tripura
Coram: Hon’ble Mr. Justice Biswajit Palit
Case No.: Crl. Rev. P. No.21 of 2024
Advocates for the Petitioner: Ms. R. Majumder, Adv, Mr. B. Banerjee, Adv.
Advocate for the Respondent: Mr. Raju Datta, P.P.
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