Delhi HC Refuses To Summon Bihar's CM Nitish Kumar As A Plaintiff's Witness In a Copyright Infringement Suit Against Him

Commenting upon the application of rule regarding summoning of witnesses in the present case, Justice Kameswar Rao noted that the plaintiff will have a sufficient opportunity to cross-examine the respondent when the same is called in the witness to present his defence. Therefore, an application for examining the same person as plaintiff's witness warrants no merit.

In the present matter, plaintiff had submitted that he conducted extensive field work research in Bihar for his PhD thesis titled 'Role of State in Economic Transformation: A case study of Contemporary Bihar'. Subsequently, he was contacted by respondent no. 2 for a copy of his thesis in order to support a PIL before Patna High Court seeking special status for Bihar.

Plaintiff had sent a soft copy of his thesis to the respondent no.2 after making minor changes, for the larger interest of the people of Bihar. A year later, plaintiff was shocked to see his original work being published as a book titled 'Special Category Status: A case for Bihar' with the state's Chief Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar, as its author.

Therefore, the plaintiff moved a petition before the court seeking a declaration stating that the plaintiff is the author of the impugned work and the respondents have violated his copyright, grant permanent injunction in favour of the plaintiff, and ask respondents to pay compensation and litigation costs.

Pursuant to this petition, the plaintiff moved another application seeking permission to examine Bihar's Chief Minister as one of his witnesses under Order XVI Rule 1 read with Section 151 CPC, despite the latter already being a respondent and his name also being present in the list of witnesses.

In support of his application, plaintiff argued that there is no bar on the right of a party to summon or examine another party including the opposite party to give evidence as his witness under the CPC.

He also argued that strong evidence need to be adduced by the party opposing an application for summon of witness to show that it is not made bona fide and that the granting of such application would be permitting an abuse of process of the Court. It is the claim of the plaintiff that no such strong evidence has been adduced / pleaded in opposing the present application.

The counsel for the respondent, Mr PD Gupta, argued that in an application for summoning

witness cogent reasons need to be given. The application is liable to be dismissed on the sole reason of not laying down any cogent reason, if the Court is of the view that the same results in an abuse of process.

He also argued that plaintiff will already have an opportunity to cross-examine Mr Nitish Kumar as he's already in the list of witnesses, and the present application has been moved to gain publicity.

The court rejected the claim of the plaintiff by noting that the plaintiff failed to show any cogent reasons for calling Mr Nitish Kumar as a witness from his side. The court said that: 'when Nitish Kumar appears in the witness box to prove his case, the plaintiff shall be within his right to demolish the case set up by the said respondent in his pleading, and ensure, the case set up by him is proved by cross-examining the said respondent.'

The court went on to highlight that:

'Respondent no. 1, being the Chief Minister of State of Bihar, it appears to me that the present application has been made only to put pressure on him as he is being summoned, not in normal course, but as plaintiff witness without cogent reason as such not bona fide nor in the interest of justice'.

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