Karnataka High Court Directs Trial Judges To Adhere To Sec.294(3) CrPC Mandate To Obviate Delay In CBI Cases
The petitioner approached the Karnataka High Court seeking quashing of the charge sheet on account of the inordinate delay in concluding the trial.
Justice V. Srishananda, Karnataka High Court
Taking note of the fact that in almost all trials, especially in CBI cases, voluminous documents are placed on record to establish the case of the prosecution, the Karnataka High Court has asked the Trial Judges to adhere to the mandate in Section 294(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), corresponding to Section 330(3) of the BNSS, in all pending trials.
The High Court clarified that such an exercise should be carried out at the commencement of the trial itself, so that the documents which are not disputed by the accused party can be marked by consent of both the parties, which would facilitate the prosecution to drop a good number of witnesses.
The petitioner approached the High Court seeking quashing of the charge sheet on account of the inordinate delay in concluding the trial.
The Bench held, “It is the experience of this court that provisions of Section 294(3) of Cr.P.C corresponding to Section 330(3) of BNSS is hardly put to use.”
“Therefore, it is just and necessary for this Court to direct all the trial judges to adhere to the mandate in Section 294(3) of Cr.P.C, corresponding to Section 330(3) of BNSS, in all pending trials”, it added.
Advocate Vijaya Kumar V. Bajantri represented the Petitioner while Advocate Prasanna Kumar P. represented the Respondent.
Arguments
It was the main grievance of the petitioner that the right to speedy trial is not adhered to, and unnecessarily the case is pending since 2013.
Reasoning
The Bench took note of the fact that in almost all trials, especially in CBI cases, voluminous documents are placed on record to establish the case of the prosecution. “Many times the voluminous documents contain some documents for which there cannot be any dispute as to its genuineness and for placing those documents or exhibits have to be marked in the case, witnesses are to be called and they need to be examined formally”, it added.
The Bench explained that to obviate such procedural formalities, compliance under Section 207 of Cr.P.C corresponding to Section 230 of BNSS, where the police instituted cases are there and where the cases are pending on account of private complaint converted into regular trials, compliance of Section 208 of Cr.P.C and Section 231 of BNSS is made mandatory.
The Bench thus asked the Trial Judges to adhere to the mandate in Section 294(3) of CrPC. As per the Bench, such an exercise should be carried out at the commencement of the trial itself, so that the documents which are not disputed by the accused party can be marked by consent of both the parties, which would facilitate the prosecution to drop a good number of witnesses, which will further ensure the laudable object.
Considering the facts of the case, the Bench disposed of the matter by granting time till the end of December 2026 to conclude the trial. The Bench further directed that any documents which are not disputed by the accused should be marked by consent and the corresponding witnesses be dropped.
Cause Title: Shri C Swamy v. The Central Bureau of Investigation (Neutral Citation: 2026:KHC:49150)