At the stage of considering an application for discharge the court must proceed on the assumption that the material which has been brought on the record by the prosecution is true.
May 13, 2019:
Supreme Court has commented that High Court ought to be cognizant of the parameters court was dealing with an application for discharge under the provisions of which govern the exercise of jurisdiction of discharge as available in several decisions of this Court.
A bench of Justice Chandrachud and Justice Gupta has passed the order in the case titled as State vs M. R. Hiremath on 01.05.2019.
The case relates to the corruption by a public servant and the High Court had quashed the case. State when challenged the quashing before the Supreme Court, it observed "the High Court ought to have been cognizant of the fact that the trial court was dealing with an application for discharge under the provisions of Section 239 of the CrPC. The parameters which govern the exercise of this jurisdiction have found expression in several decisions of this Court. It is a settled principle of law that at the stage of considering an application for discharge the court must proceed on the assumption that the material which has been brought on the record by the prosecution is true and evaluate the material in order to determine whether the facts emerging from the material, taken on its face value, disclose the existence of the ingredients necessary to constitute the offence".
It also referred to the earlier decision in which it was held as "At this stage, probative value of the materials has to be gone into and the court is not expected to go deep into the matter and hold that the materials would not warrant a conviction. In our opinion, what needs to be considered is whether there is a ground for presuming that the offence has been committed and not whether a ground for convicting the accused has been made out. To put it differently, if the court thinks that the accused might have committed the offence on the basis of the materials on record on its probative value, it can frame the charge; though for conviction, the court has to come to the conclusion that the accused has committed the offence. The law does not permit a mini trial at this stage".
Read the order here:
Picture Source :
