Hyderabad: Courts against stock witnesses use by police and prosecution agencies
Hyderabad: Despite raps from the higher courts from time to time to exercise caution in the use of stock witnesses, prosecution agencies still depend on them.
In a recent case, the Odisha High Court observed that “Stock witnesses are always at the beck and call of the police and help them in raids and searches. Stock witnesses are put up by the prosecution to speak on facts and circumstances, which they did not witness. They are made to depose whatever the police wanted to be put on record.”
According to a legal expert, not only the civil police but even premier investigation agencies like the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and the Central Bureau of Investigation use stock witnesses.
He cited a recent case in which a trial court in Delhi made several strong remarks against the DRI while acquitting two Africans in a 2009 case of possessing around 34 kg of drugs, observing that the agency had “fabricated” evidence. The court drew an inference that the prosecution had stock witnesses, who became witnesses in cases investigated by the DRI.
The Delhi High Court in Ashish Kumar Dubey v Commissioner of Police, New Delhi, in 2008 pointed out, “The observations of the trial court would seem to imply that there are stock independent witnesses who are at the service of the CBI. This seriously undermines the so-called independence of these witnesses. This is too serious a matter for the learned trial court to be basing its views on surmises and conjectures as to how these two witnesses could have been present in the office of the CBI even before the complainant reached there with his written complaint.”
The circuit bench at Kalburagi (Gulbarga) in Karnataka, in a case observed that the tenor of Sections 100 and 165 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which required the presence of a panch witness, was expected to be spontaneous and such witness must be from the inhabitants of the locality, in order to ensure impartiality in the search and investigation that is carried on.
