ROHIN KUMAR SACHDEVA Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this petition, the questions that arise for consideration are whether the power of the Judicial Magistrate under Section 190 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (hereinafter referred to as 'the Code') can be exercised or survive after taking cognizance of an offence and after recording of some prosecution evidence, irrespective of the power under Section 319 of the Code, for summoning a new person to proceed against him on the basis of the material submitted by the police in its final report under Section 173 of the Code; and secondly whether at the stage when some evidence has been recorded during the course of trial, charge can be framed against the additional accused only on the basis of material and documents enclosed by the police with the final report submitted under Section 173 of the Code.

(2.) The factual matrix giving rise to the aforesaid questions, in brief, is that FIR No. 5 dated 13-2-1998 was registered against one Varun Bajaj under Sections 420; 467, 468, 471 and 474, I.P.C. on the allegation that he had got employment as Ayurvedlc Medical Officer by submitting a forged medical certificate purported to have been Issued by the Chief Medical Officer, Civil Hospital, Jalalabad to the effect that he was a handicapped person and his left leg was short. Later on, it came to the notice of the authorities that the aforesaid Varun Bajaj was not a handicapped person and the medical certificate issued to him was a fabricated document.

(3.) During the Investigation of the aforesaid FIR, at one stage, it came to the notice of the Investigating Officer that the peti-tioner-Rohit Kumar Sachdeva was also involved in the issuance of forged medical certificate. It came in the statements of Puja Negi, Raj Kumar Bajaj and Pardeep Kumar Bajaj and others recorded under Section 161 of the Code that it was the petitioner-Rohit Kumar Sachdeva who had got illegal gratifi-cation from Varun Bajaj, Kavita Garg and others in getting employment and had obtained signatures of the concerned applicants on blank papers. But, during the course of detailed investigation, the petitioner-Rohit Kumar Sachdeva was found innocent by the police, and was kept in column No. 2 in the final report under Section 173 of the Code to the Court. The challan was only filed against accused-Varun Bajaj under Sections 467, 468, 471, 474 read with Section 120-B, I.P.C.