SHARVAN KUMAR BARETH Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) On due consideration, office objection raised by the Registry regarding maintainability of the petition is overruled and with the consent of counsel for the parties the matter is heard finally.

(2.) This writ petition under Article 227 of the Constitution of India has been filed to quash and set aside the material piece of evidence marked as Article 'K' and Article 'L' while recording the statement of PW-4 namely Chandrashekhar Rathore in CBI Case No.3/2016 pending before Special Judge for CBI Cases, Raipur in between (CBI Vs. Ramesh Kumar Koshle and one another).

(3.) Facts of the case, in nutshell, is that in pursuance of the trap proceedings, the team of Central Bureau of Investigation (for short "CBI"), while taking action on the complaint made by the complainant, caught petitioner No.1 - Shravan Kumar Bareth red handed at his residential premises on 5/7/2016 and recovered bribe amount of Rs.50,000.00 from his possession. Thereafter, petitioner No.1 in order to prove his claim that he had accepted the bribe on behalf of petitioner No.2 - Ramesh Kumar Koshle, voluntarily agreed to make a phone call to him and also agreed to deliver the bribe to him. The conversation between them was recorded through digital voice recorder (DVR) and stored in Micro SD Card and the same was produced during the recording of evidence of PW-4 namely Chandrashekhar Rathore in paragraph 43 and 44 and marked as Article 'K' and Article 'L'. However, during recording of the evidence of PW-4, no objection was raised by the petitioners about the admissibility of the said piece of evidence and no point has been raised. Now the same is challenged in this writ petition invoking the jurisdiction under Article 227 of the Constitution of India.