Supreme Court on Reforms in Criminal Trials

 

Recently, the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India in the case of To Issue Certain Guidelines Regarding Inadequacies and Deficiencies in Criminal Trials v. State of Andhra Pradesh and Others, 2021 SCC OnLine SC 329, took note of various deficiencies that occur in the course of Criminal Trials and certain practices adopted by the Trial Courts in Criminal Proceedings.

 

The Hon’ble Supreme Court had taken up this issue earlier in the year 2017 and upon years of deliberation and consultation, “Draft Rules of Criminal Practice, 2020” was formulated. Accordingly, to the Court, such Rules are no in no way repugnant to the existing criminal procedure laws.

 

Before adverting further, let us understand the “Draft Rules of Criminal Practice, 2020.” It has provided for the following important points: -

 

1. Body Sketch to accompany Medico-Legal Certificates, Post-mortem Report and Inquest Report.

 

2. Photography and Videography of Post-mortem in certain cases.

 

3. Spot Panchnama of the place of occurrence shall also contain a Site Plan indicating various details such as place where was body was found, source of light, elevation of structures etc.

 

4. The accused is to be supplied with statements of witnesses recorded under S. 161 and S. 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (in short, “CrPC”) along with the documents under S. 173, 207 and 208 of CrPC.

 

5. The Order framing charges shall be accompanied by a formal charge in Form 32, Schedule II of CrPC.

 

6. The deposition of witnesses shall be translated into English and will be read over mandatorily by the Presiding Office in Court and a free true copy of the same shall be supplied to the accused, the witness, and the prosecution on the very date of recording.

7. The Record of Depositions shall indicate the date of the chief examination, cross examination and re-examination and can be done in question-and-answer format, if found necessary. Further, any objections while recording of evidence shall be reflected in the recording of the evidence and decided expeditiously.

 

8. The Exhibit Number shall further show the Witness Number after the Exhibit Number.

 

9. After framing of charges, the accused persons shall be referred to only by their ranks in the array of accused and not by their names. Even the Exhibits and the deposition of Witnesses shall be referred to by their numbers and not by names or other references.

 

10. Relevant portions of statements under S. 161 or 164 of CrPC or Exhibits used for contradicting or corroborating the respective witnesses shall be extracted and indicated in the deposition and admissible portion under S. 8 or 72 of the Indian Evidence Act shall be marked and extracted on a separate sheet and given an Exhibit Number.

 

11. Every judgment shall contain the details as provided in the Format appended to the Rules and contain the list of witnesses, exhibits and material objects.

 

12. All judgments shall contain the points for determination, the decision and its reasons and in case of conviction, it shall separately indicate the offence and the sentence therein. In case of acquittal, a direction shall be given to set the accused at liberty unless such accused is in custody in any other case.

 

13. Even in judgment, names shall not be used and only numbers and the nomenclatures indicated hereinabove shall be used.

 

14. Bails must ordinarily be disposed of within a period of 3 to 7 days from the date of first hearing and reasons for any such delay must be mentioned in the Order itself. Copy of the Order and the Bail Application must be furnished to accused on the date of pronouncement of Order itself.

 

15. More advocates should be appointed to assist the Prosecution.

 

16. Day to day hearing of all trials should be conducted and any delay in terms of Section 309 (1) of CrPC must be recorded. If the witnesses are in attendance, no adjournment shall be granted except for special reasons to be recorded to in writing.

 

17. Sessions cases should be precedence over all other work and no other work should be taken up on sessions days until sessions work for the day is completed.

 

More about this shall follow in the next post.