Court duty-bound to allow rectification of error: Punjab and Haryana High Court

Saurabh Malik

Advertisement

Chandigarh, November 18

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has made it clear that a court was duty-bound to allow the prosecution, complainant and even the accused to rectify an error or an oversight by summoning a witness or production of evidence. The only exception would be the matters where completely irrelevant evidence was sought to be produced.

The ruling by Justice Jasjit Singh Bedi’s Bench came in a case where the petitioner-complainant moved an application under Section 311 of the CrPC for summoning a bank manager and requisitioning the account statement of the respondent-accused in a cheque-bounce case.

It was the petitioner-complainant’s case that the respondent-accused borrowed Rs 1.8 lakh as friendly loan and agreed to return it in two-three months. An account payee cheque was issued in his favour. But it was dishonoured with the remarks “account blocked”.

Pursuant to the filing of a complaint, the respondent-accused was summoned to face trial under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act. The petitioner contended that the cheque was returned by the bank, but the reason specified did not clarify the actual cause why the account was blocked. As such, he sought a clarification by bringing on record the account statement of the accused-respondent so that the court could examine whether sufficient funds were available in the account when the cheque was dishonoured. But his application was dismissed, following which he moved the High Court.

The counsel for the accused contended that the application was filed to fill a lacuna in the complainant’s case.

Justice Bedi asserted a perusal of Section 311 and SC verdicts clearly established that the court’s determination of an application should be based only on the test of the essentiality of evidence.

Justice Bedi asserted: “While, it is true that the right of the accused to a fair trial is constitutionally protected under Article 21 of the Constitution, it is the duty of the court to allow the prosecution/complainant or for that matter the accused to rectify an error/oversight in the interest of justice.”

Allowing the plea, Justice Bedi added the prosecution and the defence must be permitted to lead evidence in the manner they deemed appropriate in a particular case and the court should ordinarily not curtail the same, unless it found that the evidence sought to be produced is completely irrelevant to the controversy in hand.