Priya Gour
Published on: 29th July, 2022 at 18:07 IST
While hearing an appeal against rejection of bail, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court decided that even photostats of the charge sheet shall be admissible to grant bail.
The appeal was filed against the rejection of bail claiming that the original charge sheet documents were not laid before the Court.
The matter before the Court was whether default bail / compulsive bail in terms of Section 167(2) of CrPC, 1973 on filing of the charge-sheet within the period of 180 days, to be available,without original documents be considered or not.
The appellants challenged the bail rejection on the ground that the National Investigating Agency (NIA), produced incomplete shadow challan/charge-sheet in their photostat form before the trial court, with an intention of denial of bail.
Other grounds mentioned by the appellant for grant of bail included, NIA’s failure of completion of investigation within the legally prescribed time frame, along with the extension granted by Special Court, so the appellant had a right of bail.
Also as per the records it was found by the Court that the agency had duly laid the charge sheet along with photostat documents before the court on 04-02-2022. The original documents were submitted to the government for grant of sanction for prosecution. Hence, while they remained in transit, the agency filed the charge-sheet before the court along with photo states of the documents within the permissible time frame.
The Bench comprising Justices Ali Mohammad Magrey & MA Chaudhary was said to have quoted that, “We do not find any illegality in the method and manner in which the charge-sheet was laid due to attending circumstances by the prosecution, as the prosecution had completed the investigation before the submission of the case for accord of sanction and the charge-sheet had been produced in the trial court within 180 days from the arrest of the appellant.”
The Court found sufficient ground for rejecting the appeal of the appellants. Reliance was placed in the Supreme Court decided case Narendra Kumar Amin Vs.Central Bureau of Investigation & Ors. (2015), underlining that:
“if the cognizance is taken on the police report the contention that the charge-sheet was incomplete is wholly untenable and liable to be rejected .“
Hence, the Court concluded the appeal to be dismissed and the impugned order to be upheld.