Right To Expeditious Trial Is A Fundamental Right: Chhattisgarh HC Reiterates While Allowing Bail Application U/S 439 CrPC

The applicant/accused filed an application under Section 439 CrPC before the High Court for a grant of regular bail. The applicant/accused was arrested in relation to a cheating case under Sections 420, 409, 467, 468 and 471 of the IPC. This was the third bail application before the High Court after the previous two applications were dismissed earlier. The applicant/accused had filed a Special Leave Petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court, where the Court had fixed the time fixed the timeline for completion of the trial on or before 31.12.2023.

Justice Deepak Kumar Tiwari noted that during the admission stage of this bail application, the applicant had mentioned that no handwriting expert's report was included with the charge sheet. Further, the report of the bank's Enquiry Officer which led to the filing of the FIR was not included in the chargesheet and the Enquiry Officer was not made a witness during the trial. The High Court had directed the trial court to proceed on the case expeditiously.

It referred to Sections 193 BNSS which deals with the report of a police officer on the completion of the investigation and 230 of BNSS which provides furnishing the accused with a copy of the police report and other required documents.

The Court noted that under Section 193(8) of BNSS, it is the duty of the Investigating Officer to provide a police report and other documents to the accused, with the documents being indexed to the Magistrate as required under Section 230 of BNSS. Section 230 further requires the Magistrate to ensure that the required documents are furnished to the accused without delay, and in no case later than fourteen days from the date of production or appearance of the accused.

The Court further referred to Section 20 BNSS which deals with the powers and functions of the Director of Prosecution, Deputy Director of Prosecution & Assistant Director of Prosecution to monitor cases to ensure their expeditious disposal. It stated “To achieve the aforesaid object of the Legislature for proper monitoring of the cases, it is required by the Prosecutor to maintain a brief, a copy of the Police Report is needed to be supplied to the office of Prosecution in advance”

It stated that as per Section 20 BNSS, it is expected that the Investigating Officer should provide an advance copy of the Police Report to the prosecution. Additionally, the Superior Police Officer must ensure that a proper Police Report, duly indexed and paginated is filed with a sufficient number of copies.

The Court noted that the Director of Prosecution in an affidavit mentioned that the Station House Officer did not provide a copy of the charge sheet to the Prosecution office and the Officer did not seek the opinion of the Prosecution Officer before submitting the charge sheet.

The Court stated that the action of the Investigating Officer to not provide the police report to the Prosecution's Office was improper.

It observed that a speedy trial is a fundamental human right of an under trial. In the present case, it noted that even when the accused moved a bail application and pointed out that the handwriting expert's report was not filed before the Trial Court, the State agency did not show any urgency in filing it promptly. It noted that the Assistant District Prosecution Officer had not maintained a brief because the Investigating Officer did not supply a copy of the Police Report to him and that subsequently, the prosecution filed an application under Section 311 of the CrPC to summon the Enquiry Officer.

The Court stated that the delay in the trial was not the fault of the applicant/accused and thus granted him bail under Section 439 Cr. PC.

Case title: Vislavath Akash vs. State of Chhattisgarh (MCRC No. 671 of 2024)