JAYARAM SINGH Vs. TUKA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The informant in Sessions Trial No. 184 of 1989, which is pending in the Court of the Second AddI. Sessions Judge, Cuttack filed this revision petition assailing the order dated 5.3.1990 by which the trial Court rejected the prayer of the prosecution to playa video cassette in Court.

(2.) In the aforementioned criminal case the opposite parties 1 to 5 are being tried for the charges under section 302, I.P.C. and certain other offences. A number of witnesses have been examined in the case including Jayagopal Parija (P.W. 22) who recorded the videocassette (M.O. IV) on the requisition of the Investigating Officer. As evident from his deposition he recorded the statements of the accused persons during certain post occurrence incidents at different places as required by the Investigating Officer. During the trial of the case prosecution wan led to cassette to be played in Court, probably with a view to record in evidence the statements allegedly made by the accused. The prayer was turned down by the learned trial Judge mainly on the ground that the statements said to have been recorded in the cassette are in the nature of confessional statements made to a police officer and therefore hit by section 25 of the Evidence Act.

(3.) That a tape recorded conversation is admissible in evidence is no longer in doubt. The Apex Court in the case of R.M. Malkani v. State of Maharashtra,1 ruled that tape recorded conversation is admissible provided that the conversation is relevant to the matters in issue, that there is identification of the voice and that the accuracy of the conversation is proved by eliminating the possibility of erasing the tape record. A contemporaneous tape record of a relevant conversation is a relevant fact and is admissible under section 8 of the Evidence Act; it is res gestae; it is also comparable to a photograph of a relevant incident and the conversation is therefore a relevant fact and is admissible under section 7 of the Evidence Act. When a Court permits a tape recording to be played over it is acting on real evidence if it treats the intonation of the words to be relevant and genuine; the fact that tape recorded conversation can be altered is also to be borne in mind by the Court while admitting it in evidence. Similar view had been taken earlier by the Court in the case of S. Pratap Singh v. State of Punjab,2 and in the case of Yusufalli Esmail Nagree v. The State of Ma ha ra s htra .