Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, June 2: In the much publicized ETT scam, High Court today dismissed the criminal revision petition filed by one of the accused Manish Suri against the order of Special Judge Anticorruption.
After hearing both the sides, Justice Tashi Rabstan observed, “the accused cannot demand anything extraneous to the charge sheet, rather the documents which were sought to be relied upon by the prosecution”.
“About 1682 files relating to various ETT Institutions have been seized by the investigating agency. However, as per Senior AAG, only a few of them relate to the present case and rest of the seized record is not in any way connected to this very case”, the court observed, adding “further, Section 233 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, obviously 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 bifurcation of charge sheets in accordance with the procedure contained in Chapter XIX is concerned”, High Court said, adding “no doubt the petitioner-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 order dated 26.11.2015 had directed the Crime Branch to supply the copies of missing/deficient documents as sought for by the petitioner on payment of costs/fee under rules, but that did not mean anything extraneous to the charge sheet, rather the documents which were sought to be relied upon by the prosecution”, Justice Rabstan said, adding “even in the affidavit dated 20.05.2016 filed by the Senior Superintendent of Police, Crime Branch, Jammu, it has been specifically deposed that the case property in the charge sheet filed against the petitioner-accused stands supplied to him free of costs”.
With these observations, High Court dismissed the criminal revision.
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