Supreme Court: Taking note of the fact that in several cases where poisoning is suspected, the prosecuting agencies are not taking steps to obtain viscera report, the 2-judge bench of Hon’ble Ranjana Prakash Desai and J. Chelameswar, JJ directed the prosecuting agencies to send the viscera to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) for examination immediately after the post-mortem and the FSL should then ensure that the viscera is examined immediately and report is sent to the investigating agencies/courts post haste. The Court said that the non-compliance of the said direction would empower the Criminal Courts to summon the concerned officer. Considering the tendency of the witnesses to turn hostile, the Court said that these scientific tests are of vital importance to a criminal case and the Investigating Officer, the Prosecutor and the Court should work in sync in order to cope up with such lapses. The Court gave the said direction upon noticing the fact that in the short span of 2 months, it was dealing with the third case where viscera report was not brought on record either due to inadvertence or with the intent to frustrate the prosecution. [Joshinder Yadav v. State of Bihar, Criminal Appeal No. 259 of 2009, decided on January 20, 2014]
Posted on: Thu, 23 Jan 2014 10:40:15 +0000
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