JUDGMENT

Dipak Misra, J.—If one is asked a question, what afflicts the legally requisite criminal trial in its conceptual eventuality in this country the two reasons that may earn the status of phenomenal signification are, first, procrastination of trial due to non-availability of witnesses when the trial is in progress and second, unwarranted adjournments sought by the counsel conducting the trial and the unfathomable reasons for acceptation of such prayers for adjournments by the trial courts, despite a statutory command under Section 309 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC) and series of pronouncements by this Court. What was a malady at one time, with the efflux of time, has metamorphosed into malignancy. What was a mere disturbance once has become a disorder, a diseased one, at present.

2. The instant case frescoes and depicts a scenario that exemplifies how due to passivity of the learned trial Judge, a witness, despite having stood embedded absolutely firmly in his examination-in-chief, has audaciously and, in a way, obnoxiously, thrown all the values to the wind, and paved the path of tergiversation. It would not be a hyperbole to say that it is a maladroit and i