SYAMA CHARAN SAHA Vs. NAGENDRA NATH RAKSHIT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition for revision of an order made by a Presidency Magistrate on November 2, 1956, by which he refused the Petitioner's application for examination of some persons, who were not included in the list of witnesses already supplied. The Petitioner instituted a complaint in court charging the opposite parties with having committed various offences under Sections 420, 409, 424 and 120B of the Indian Penal Code. The allegations in the petition of complaint do not fall to be mentioned in the present context.

(2.) The complaint was sent to the police for enquiry and report. On August 27, 1956, the police after holding an enquiry submitted a report and the learned Magistrate directed processes to issue for the attendance of the accused opposite parties. It is said that the Complainant-Petitioner having come to know that the police enquiry had revealed the existence of other very material witnesses to the case, made an application before the Magistrate setting out their names as being those of persons privy to the transaction which formed the subject-matter of the complaint and prayed that those witnesses be summoned for examination in the case. The learned Chief Presidency Magistrate before whom this application had been made, merely directed that the application be filed with the record of the case. Thereafter, when the case was transferred to the trying Magistrate, the prayer for examination of additional witnesses whose names had transpired in the police, enquiry was renewed, but ultimately the trying Magistrate thought that there was no substance in the prayer and accordingly rejected it. This was done by an order, dated November 2, 1956, against which the present Rule is directed.

(3.) On November 2, 1956, which was the first date of effective hearing of the case, only one witness was examined-in-chief and when another who had presumably been named in the application referred to above, was offered for examination, the learned Magistrate did not allow the witness to give evidence on the ground that he had not been named as one of the witnesses by the complainant before the issue of processes for compelling the attendance of the accused persons under Section 204 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.