AYUSH NIRMAL PUGALIYA Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These appeals were partheard. Today, we restarted the hearing of these partheard appeals. On 26th of February, 2015, this Court had made an order on the application that was filed by the prosecution i.e. Criminal Application (APPA) No.141 of 2015 in Criminal Appeal No.391 of 2013 asking the learned Principal District and Sessions Judge, Nagpur in exercise of powers under Section 391 (1) and (2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure to record additional evidence for the reasons stated in said order.

(2.) That order was passed because this court found during the course of hearing that the learned Trial Judge had granted liberty to the defence counsel to put the questions in respect of the omissions in the depositions of PW 4 Shubham Ashok Baid and PW 5 Raidam Ravi KishanPuriya directly to the Investigating Officer PW 31 Sunil Jaiswal, instead of putting those omissions to the witnesses PW 4 and PW 5 first. The omissions were never put to those two witnesses.

(3.) Pursuant to the aforesaid order directing recording of additional evidence, learned Principal District and Sessions Judge recorded the additional evidence of PW 4 Shubham Ashok Baid and PW 5 Raidam Ravi KishanPuriya and PW 31 Sunil Jaiswal since in our view the exercise of putting omissions to the witnesses, PW 4 Shubham Ashok Baid and PW 5 Raidam Ravi KishanPuriya first should have been undertaken and thereafter to the Investigating Officer. We have seen the additional evidence of the witnesses recorded by the learned Principal District Judge pursuant to the aforesaid order dated 26th of February, 2015. We commenced the hearing.