Guidelines on Discharging or Framing Charge in a Case

The High Court of Kerala (HCK), in Sandeep G v State of Kerala (Vandana Das case), laid down the parameters given below while considering the plea of discharge and framing of charges.

The HCK relied upon the Supreme Court (SC) decisions in State of Gujarat v. Dilipsinh Kishorsinh Rao (2023) and Vishnu Kumar Shukla v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2023) in arriving at the decisions as follows:

1. The Trial Judge shall prima facie look into the evidence placed by prosecution and investigating agency to assess whether the materials prima facie induce suspicious circumstances against the accused to frame charges. If the Trial Court feels there is no sufficient ground for proceeding, then accused will be discharged. But, if the Court was of the opinion that there were sufficient grounds to presume that the accused has committed the offences which are triable, then charges will be framed.
2. Trial Judge to apply judicial mind whilst analysing prosecution materials to assess whether a case has been made out by prosecution for trial on basis of final report/charge sheet.
3. Once the accused is able to demonstrate from the materials that form part of the charge/final report at the stage of framing the charge that could impact the case, it is unfair to suggest that such materials should be disregarded or overlooked by the Court. This is because the intent of the Court is to give chance to accused to make submissions under Section 227 to assist the Court whether to proceed with the trial or not.
4. The Court must consider and evaluate the prosecution materials on the assumption that it is true to determine whether the facts emerging from the materials taken on its face value disclose the existence of the ingredients necessary for the offence/s alleged.
5. The defence of the accused is not to be looked at this stage. CrPC does not permit the accused to produce documents at the stage of framing charges and his submissions should be confined to materials produced by the prosecution.
6. The primary consideration is the test of the existence of a prima facie case, the probative value of materials on record shall not be evaluated at the stage of framing charges.
7. During this stage, the Court has to form a presumptive opinion and is not expected to go deep into the probative value of the material on record to determine whether the material on record would certainly lead to conviction at the conclusion of the trial.
8. At this stage, the Court has to sift prosecution materials to assess whether there is sufficient grounds to proceed against the accused for the trial. It need not enter into the pros and cons of the matter weighing and balancing evidence and probabilities.
9. Strong suspicion against the accused during framing charges is not proof of guilt of the accused during the conclusion of the trial. In such cases, it is not open for Court to say that there is no sufficient grounds to proceed since charges need to be framed to permit prosecution to adduce evidence.
10. If the evidence that prosecution proposes to adduce to prove the guilt of the accused even if fully accepted before it is challenged in cross-examination or rebutted by defence evidence cannot show that the accused committed the offence, then there will be no sufficient ground for proceeding with the trial.