Delhi High Court: Accused Has Right To Ask For Certified Copy Of Documents Which Form Part Of Chargesheet

The Delhi High Court has held that an Accused has right to ask for the Certified Copy of documents which form part of the chargesheet.

The Court was considering an Application seeking direction to furnish a copy of the complete Hard Disk to the accused persons.

The single-bench of Justice Vikas Mahajan observed, "Even assuming that copy of the hard disk in question was supplied to the accused persons at the stage of Section 207 Cr. P.C. proceedings, still the right of the petitioner to ask for the certified copy of documents which form part of the chargesheet cannot be negated. It may so happen that the documents which are part of the chargesheet even after they have been supplied to the accused persons might get lost, the accused person can still ask for the certified copy/attested copy of the same at his own expense. Non-supply of a copy of such documents will deprive the accused persons of a meaningful opportunity to put forth his defence which includes cross-examination as well. Such a denial would thus, mean a negation of the principle of natural justice. However, while considering the request for certified/attested copy of documents forming part of chargesheet, after the commencement of trial, the court has to guard against the frivolous requests which are only aimed to delay the trial."

The Petitioner was represented by Advocate Rudra Pratap while the Respondent was represented by Advocate Aman Usman.

Facts of the Case

During the pendency of the main Petition, the Petitioner filed an Application seeking direction to the Additional Sessions Judge to furnish a copy of the complete hard disk, which was brought on record by PW-7 with a further direction to defer the recording of evidence of PW-7

Counsel for the Applicant submitted that in the absence of hard disk, no effective and meaningful cross-examination of PW-7 would be possible. He contended that though there are observations of the court that the documents have been supplied besides an endorsement made by the Counsel for the accused persons acknowledging that ‘copy of documents of chargesheet received’, but there is no specific mention that copy of the hard disk has been supplied or received by the accused persons or their counsel.

He further submitted that since copy of the hard disk is required to be seen for conducting effective and meaningful cross-examination of PW-7, therefore, the accused persons had applied for the certified copies including copy of the above mentioned hard disk but the copying agency has returned the said application for certified copies with remarks “that digital record i.e. hard disk, CD, Pen Drive cannot be given as there is no provision in CA Branch”.

He submitted that the prosecution is relying on certain photocopied documents which have been claimed to be taken from the hard disk that has been exhibited as Ex. PW-7/P1 through PW-7 but there is no mention of the source folder or source file details of such documents and therefore it was necessary that the details of the contents of the hard disk and the properties of the respective digital files as to author and date be ascertained before the witness is cross-examined further.

Reasoning By Court

The Court held that an accused is well within his right to ask for the Certified Copy of documents which form part of the chargesheet even if the copy of the hard disk in question was supplied to the Accused persons at the stage of Section 207 Cr. P.C. proceedings. It, however stressed that the Court is at liberty to reject frivolous requests.

"The present does not appear to be a case where the petitioners/accused persons have delayed the trial, rather the statement of PW-7 was recorded and his cross-examination was also carried out on 14.01.2015. Thereafter, the matter was fixed for final arguments on 29.05.2019. However, the State first filed an application under Section 311 Cr.P.C. for recalling the witness pertaining to the sanction to prove the second sanction order as the first sanction was held to be vitiated. The said application was allowed, the recalled witness was examined and the matter was again extensively argued finally from May, 2022 till November, 2023. Subsequently, the application under Section 311 Cr.P.C. for recalling PW-7, who had already been examined on 14.01.2015, was filed which was allowed vide impugned order dated 07.10.2024. Clearly, this protraction of trial cannot be attributed to the petitioners/accused persons," the Court observed.

It referred to P. Gopal Krishnan @ Dileep Vs. State of Kerala &Anr. (2020) wherein it was held that the contents of the memory card/pen-drive, being electronic record, must be regarded as a document. It was further held that if the prosecution is relying on the electronic record, ordinarily, the accused must be given a cloned copy thereof to enable him/her to present an effective defence during the trial. However, in cases involving issues such as of privacy of the complainant/witness or his/her identity, the Court may be justified in providing only inspection of such electronic record to the accused and his/her lawyer. It was further observed that in case of voluminous record, instead of furnishing the accused with a copy of the document, the Magistrate shall allow the inspection of such document, but such ground predicated in the second proviso to Section 207 Cr. P.C. cannot be invoked in case of electronic record.

Ruling out any privacy issue in the present case, the Court observed that the basic principle of natural justice is that the material sought to be used against the accused must be provided to him by the prosecution in order to enable him to effectively defend himself in the proceedings.

".......this Court is of the view that to put a quietus to the dispute and avoid the trial from getting further protracted, a cloned copy of the hard disk may be made available to the petitioners/accused persons at their expense, so that there is no denial of right of fair trial to the petitioners/accused persons and they could effectively cross-examine the prosecution witness i.e. PW-7," the Court noted.

The Application was accordingly allowed.

Cause Title: Gopal Mishra & Anr. vs. State Govt. of NCT of Delhi (2025:DHC:1609)

Appearances:

Petitioner- Advocate Rudra Pratap, Advocate Tushar Randhawa, Advocate Rahul Sharma, Advocate Mohit Singh

Respondent- Additional Public Prosecutor Aman Usman, Advocate

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