If Police Files Memo To Array A Person As Accused, Court Can Examine Sufficiency Of Material And Refuse Permission: Telangana High Court

Single bench of Dr. Justice D. Nargarjun observed,

"Fastening of criminal liability against any person is not a small thing. It takes away personal liberty of an individual. It can not be done hastily, without doing proper exercise and without collecting proper material and without even properly analyzing as to whether there is any material prima facie to conclude that the proposed accused have committed the offences alleged. Therefore, the trial Court is justified in examining the material placed before the Court to see whether such material can be the basis to array the four persons as A4 to A7."

During investigation, the Special Investigation Team collected incriminating evidence against four more persons for actively taking part in commission of offence and wanted to array them as accused and filed a memo in that regard before the Principal Special Judge for ACB Cases.

The Trial Court registered the memo as a Criminal Misc. Petition and upon hearing the proposed accused, the Court passed an order rejecting the memo.

A criminal revision case was filed by the State of Telangana to set aside the orders passed by the Trial Court on the ground that the accused persons have no right to be heard at the stage of investigation. The Advocate General cited Ranjeet Singh and others vs. State of U.P. and another (1999) in which it was observed as:

“Save under certain exceptions under the entire scheme of the Code, the accused has no participation as a matter of right during the course of the investigation of a case instituted on a police report till the Investigation culminates in filing of final report under Sec. 173(2) of the Code If prior notice and an opportunity of hearing are to be given to an accused in every criminal case before taking any action against him, such a procedure would frustrate the proceedings, obstruct the taking of prompt action as law demands defeat the ends of justice”

The Court noted that in usual circumstances memos are filed before the Court to inform the Court about specific matters such as granting of stay or death of a person, although no such event transpired in the present case, the SIT had filed a memo. The Memo was filed along with material evidence as proof for arraying the proposed accused. The Court was of the opinion that the application suggests that the SIT wanted to not only inform the Court but also get clearance from the Court.

The Court was of the firm opinion that since the police have filed a memo intimating the Court that it intends to array four persons as A4 to A7 on the strength of some material, the exercise taken up by the trial Court to examine whether there is sufficient material to array three persons as A4 to A7 is also justified.

It added that the Trial Court had converted the memo as criminal miscellaneous petition and as a consequence, it was empowered to pass orders on the petition.

Counsel for Petitioner: Advocate General for the State and Senior Advocate Sri N. Ramchandra Rao

Counsel for Respondent: Senior Advocate Sri L. Ravichandran

Case Title: The State of Telangana v. Ramachandra Bharathi alias Sathish Sharma and 2 others

Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Tel) 5