BHAGWAN DASS Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THAT every official in the office of the Chemical Examiner (or in the alternative at least some of them), in whose custody at any stage the sample had remained, must necessarily step into the witness-box to depose about its safe transmission, is the rather hyper-technical stand taken on behalf of the petitioners, which has necessitated this reference to the Division Bench. An inevitable corollary thereof is whether Section 293 of the Code of Criminal Procedure renders admissible the averments in the report of the Chemical Examiner with regard to the condition of such a sample and the manner of its receipt.

(2.) FOR the adjudication of the aforesaid pristinely legal questions it seems unnecessary to advert to the facts of any one of this set of 16 connected criminal revisions before us. It suffices to mention that when some of them came up before my learned brother I. S. Tiwana, J. sitting singly, reliance was placed on three single Bench judgments of this Court in Amarjit Singh v. State of. Punjab 1981 Chand Cri C 170 (P and H); Criminal Revn. No. 219 of 1979 Tehal Singh v. State of Punjab decided on November 20, 1980 Reported in (1981) 8 Cri LT 58 (Purij and Har.) and Criminal Revn. No. 304 of 1979 Gurcharan Singh v. State of Punjab decided on Feb. 5, 1981, for contending that because everyone of the persons in the Office of the Chemical Examiner, and in any case some of them who had kept the Samples in the safe custody, had not been examined as witnesses, (or by producing their affidavits) the vital link evidence was missing, thus vitiating the whole prosecution case. Apparently, not accepting so doctrinaire a stand and doubting the correctness of the ratio of the aforesaid judgments, the matter was referred for consideration by a larger Bench vide the order of reference dated 28th Sept. 1981 in Criminal Revn, No. 1043 of 1981 Mohinder Kumar v. State of Punjab

(3.) AS before the single Bench; so before us, the learned Counsel relied upon the authorities aforesaid buttressed by similar views expressed in Atma Singh v. State of Punjab 1981 Chand Cri C 181 (Pandh); and Bishno v. State of Punjab 1981 Chand Cri C 243 : 1982 Cri LJ NOC 22 (Pandh); to reiterate their stand that the non-production of witnesses from the office of the Chemical Examiner, who may have handled the sample till it reached the hands of the person analysing the same, vitiates the whole prosecution case in its entirely. The cornerstone of the contention was ultimately sought to be rested on the observations of their Lordships of the Supreme Court in State, of Rajasthan v. Daulat Ram :