Special Court, CBI, Ghaziabad- The Court of Shivank Singh, Special Judicial Magistrate (CBI), allowed the application where permission to lead secondary evidence was sought for.
In the present matter, the charge sheet along with certain photocopies (made from the original) were lost from the CBI office, with an enquiry pending for the same. The earlier application was dismissed by the same court, since the CBI could not prove the loss of documents, and therefore the present application.
The defence opposed the application by stating that the CBI filed the application with a malafide intention as the agency wants to protect its officials from the misconduct. And that it changed its stance from not traceable to stolen/missing.
The Court was of the opinion that the present application was filed after the registration of an FIR (which was missing in the previous application) of the lost documents, therefore it fulfilled the criteria under Section 65(c), Evidence Act. It further took note of the fact that permission to lead secondary evidence was sought only for the documents on record. It even clearly demarcated the responsibilities of the department and the absolute no correlation with the independent functions of the Court. The Court took the changed circumstances into consideration and further held that the, “…disposal of this application would not amount to review as the earlier application was dismissed by this court on the ground that prosecution has not fulfilled the criteria u/s 65(c) of the Evidence Act…”. And was thus of the opinion that granting the permission would not hamper the interests of justice of the accused.[CBI v. Lokeshwar P. Mathur, Cri. Case/5100004/2014, decided on 09-03-2021]
