ARIVAZHAGAN Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Leave granted.

(2.) Has the accused a right to examine a myriad of witnesses and has the Court any power to prune down the list of such witnesses Such a question arose when the appellant submitted a list of 267 witnesses for the defence when the trial reached that stage. The trial Court was not disposed to allow him to examine all the persons mentioned in the list and directed him to limit the number to the minimum necessary. As the appellant was not willing to reduce the number of witnesses he approached the High Court to help him. But the advantage he got from the High Court was only marginal and it did not satisfy him. Hence, he filed the Special Leave Petition. After hearing Shri Sushil Kumar, learned senior counsel for the appellant we felt that the appeal can be disposed of without the aid of arguments of the respondents and so we did not issue notice to them.

(3.) The factual background in which the situation reached the above stage is the following:Appellant and three persons are now being arraigned before the Special Court at Chennai for facing a charge for the offence under Section 13(1)(c) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (for short 'the P.C. Act) read with Section 109 of the Indian Penal Code. Prosecution examined a number of witnesses by summoning 41 persons. When the case reached the stage envisaged in Section 243(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (for short the Code) he submitted a list of defence witnesses. As we mentioned earlier the number of witnesses shown in the list was so much that even a marathon legal proceeding would not be sufficient to exhaust the entire list.