Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, Feb 4: High Court upheld the order of court below charging the co-accused with murder and criminal conspiracy.
The co-accused had challenged the order of trial court for quashing the same on the ground that the court has framed charges of murder and criminal conspiracy against him on the confessional statement of the main accused which as per the evidence act is inadmissible.
His counsel argued that the trial court erroneously placed reliance upon the disclosure statement of main accused Ravinder Singh which led to the recovery of the knife allegedly given to the accused Ravinder Singh by the petitioner-Rakesh Kumar Gudda.
The counsel contended that the disclosure statement of accused-Singh and the consequent recovery of weapon does not connect the petitioner-Gudda with the commission of crime and therefore, the trial court committed an error in placing reliance upon the aforesaid statement for framing of the charge under challenge in this petition.
Justice Sanjeev Kumar while turning down all these arguments made by the counsel for the accused-Gudda said that at the stage of framing of charge, the court is only required to consider and evaluate the material and the documents placed on record with the charge-sheet with a view to finding out if the facts emerging there from taken on their face value do disclose the existence of all ingredients constituting the alleged offences.
“Even strong suspicion against the accused for commission of alleged offence/offences is good enough to frame a charge. Section 227 of the Cr.P.C provides for discharge of accused if the trial court finds no sufficient ground for proceeding against him. The object of Section 227 of the Cr.P.C is to filter out cases where no prima facie evidence exists against the accused and to ensure that frivolous and baseless prosecutions are curtailed at an early stage”, Justice Kumar added.
The court further recorded that the judge must confine itself to the documents provided by the prosecution under Section 173 Cr.P.C and the rival contentions of the parties and the defense evidence is generally not considered at this stage. “Absence of any material evidence linking the accused to the alleged offence or unreliability, inherent improbability and contradiction of evidence may be a ground for discharge of the accused”, reads the judgment.
In a nutshell, Justice Kumar said, the trial court must evaluate the evidence on record to find out whether there is sufficient ground to proceed against the accused and while doing so, the court must consider whether the material on record, if un-rebutted, would lead to conviction.
“…the scope of the jurisdiction of the trial court to frame charge, the trial court has committed no illegality in framing the charges against the petitioner. To reiterate, the evidence on record, oral as well as documentary, is sufficient to create a strong suspicion about the involvement of the petitioner in the commission of crime and therefore, there is sufficient ground for proceeding against him. This Court finds no merit in this petition and the same is, accordingly, dismissed”, Justice Kumar concluded while holding the trial court order of framing of charge of murder and criminal conspiracy as valid.
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