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Nitya Dharmananda @ K. Lenin v. Sri Gopal Sheelum Reddy alias Nithya Bhaktananda

Criminal Appeal · 2017 INSC 1201Decided 7 Dec 2017
Criminal Appeal No. 2114 of 2017
Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel · Justice Uday Umesh Lalit

Background

The respondent was charge-sheeted under Section 376 IPC (rape). He asked the High Court to direct that all the material the investigator had collected but left out of the chargesheet be summoned under Section 91 CrPC, so that the defence could rely on it when charges were framed. The trial court had refused this, but the Karnataka High Court reversed that refusal and allowed the material to be summoned, prompting both the original accused-appellants and the State of Karnataka to appeal.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court reaffirmed the settled rule from State of Orissa v. Debendra Nath Padhi that an accused ordinarily has no right to invoke Section 91 CrPC at the charge-framing stage to produce defence material, since that would turn the hearing into a "mini-trial." However, it clarified that courts retain a narrow, discretionary power to summon withheld material where there is reason to believe the investigator deliberately left out material of "sterling quality" that has a crucial bearing on whether a charge should be framed at all. On the facts, it held the High Court's blanket approach could not be sustained and set aside that part of the ruling, while leaving it to the trial court to proceed with framing of charge applying these clarified principles.

Lesson Learnt

At the charge-framing stage, an accused generally cannot demand production of every piece of unused investigation material to build a defence, but a court is not powerless to call for genuinely crucial material if there is a real concern that the investigator selectively withheld it.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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