JOTI JIBAN GHOSH Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This Rule was issued upon an application made by one of the accused persons in a criminal case pending before a Magistrate at Sealdah in which charges have been framed against three accused persons for alleged offences under Sections 147, 323 and 341 of the Indian Penal Code. The prayer in the Rule is for quashing the charges framed against the petitioner Jyotijiban Ghosh. It has to be observed that, in the certified copy of the charge Tiled with the petition in this Court, the name of Jyotijiban Ghosh has been wrongly mentioned as Jyotijiban Shah. That bespeaks of carelessness with which the copy was compared and certified to be a true copy in the Magistrate's Court.

(2.) Appearing in support of the Rule, the learned Advocate Mr. Nikhil Chandra Talukdar has urged that the case having been instituted upon a police report the procedure under Section 251A of the Code of Criminal Procedure was followed and, for framing the charges under the provisions of Section 251A (3), the materials before the Magistrate were only the documents, copies of which had been given under the provisions of Section 173(4) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, that is, the First Information Report and the statements recorded by the police during investigation under Sec. 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. According to Mr. Talukdar, not only the petitioner Jyotijiban Ghosh has not been implicated in the alleged offences in any of those documents by name, but also, according to the learned Advocate for the petitioner, there is nothing that would go to connect this petitioner with those offences. Mr. Talukdar has very fairly pointed out that in those documents, it has been mentioned that there were five or six persons, other man those named, as having taken part in the acts constituting the offences. It was said in the First information Report and by the other witnesses that they would be able to identify those persons not named. But Mr. Tatukdar contended that inasmuch as there has been no Test identification Parade held, there would be no corroboration at an at the trial of any identification in Court, even if such evidence would be available. Therefore, Mr. Tatukdar contends that, there is no material at all that could nave enabled the learned Magistrate to frame the charges against the petitioner Jyotijiban Ghosh. In pursuing this contention, Mr. Talukdar has relied on the decisions of this court holding that mere identification in Court at the trial is of no value at all unless such evidence is corroborated by contemporaneous evidence or at least corroboration by proper identification at Test Identification Parade.

(3.) On behalf of the State in opposing the Rule, the learned Advocate Mr. Jitendra Mohan Banerjee has contended that it is not correct to say that there was no material to Implicate the petitioner Jyotijiban Ghosh in the alleged offences, because there is material to show that this accused person was arrested at the place of occurrence, during the occurrence itself, by the police officer who arrived there on information even before the formal First Information Report was recorded and any statement under Section 161 OT the Code of Criminal Procedure was recorded. This material, according to Mr. Banerjee, would be provided by the investigating Officer as a witness in the trial and that would, besides being direct evidence implicating the petitioner in the alleged offences, would also provide the corroboration in support of any identification in Court that the other witnesses may make.