Fair Disclosure under CrPC

In Akhil Sabu v. State of Kerala [2024: KER: 49597], the High Court of Kerala observed that Rule 19(4) of the Kerala Criminal Rules of Practice, 1982, mandates that every accused must be supplied with the statements of witnesses recorded and a list of documents, as specified under Sections 173, 207, and 208 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (now Sections 193, 230, and 231 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023).

The accused in a criminal trial will be able to get the statements, documents and material objects collected during the course of investigation, but which are not relied upon by the Investigating Officer, says the Kerala High Court in Varghese Kuruvila v State of Kerala [2024: KER:66881].

When a criminal case is instituted against a person on a police report the accused has the right to get a copy each of the First Information Report (FIR), statements of witnesses recorded by the police, the police report and other records filed along with the police report. This is an obligation of the Magistrate under Section 207 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 (CrPC).  

An accused has the right to get copies of (or examine) the unmarked and unexhibited documents, which are not being relied on by the prosecution, in a criminal proceeding, as per the Supreme Court ( SC) judgement in V K Sasikala v State Rep. By Superintendent Of Police and some other related judgements.

The documents which are not part of the charge sheet, but seized by the investigating agency during the investigation of the offence, cannot be withheld by the prosecution merely on the ground that the documents sought to be summoned are not part of the charge sheet, the Gujarat High Court held in a revision application in Sanjiv Rajendra Bhat v State of Gujarat.