A court has the discretion to permit a party to cross-examine its own witness, even if the witness has not made a previous statement that is inconsistent with his testimony in court.

K.B.N.Singh, J.

1. This application in revision is directed against an order of the learned Assistant Sessions Judge, permitting the prosecution to cross-examine P. W. 10.

2. The case of the complainant-opposite party was that she was married to one Gultain Pasi of village Chatneshwar but she later developed intimacy with the petitioner and started residing with him since about one year before the filing of the complaint. Thereafter she became pregnant. Her further case is that the petitioner wanted her to agree to abortion, which she refused. Thereafter, the petitioner gave blows with his foot on the abdomen of the complainant and after she fell down, he further assaulted her and after retaining her box containing her belongings worth Rs. 525/-, he ousted her from the house. After cognizance was taken on the complaint filed by the opposite" Party, the petitioner was committed to the Court of Session for trial under Sections 312, 403 and 511 of the Indian Penal Code,

3. At the trial before the Assistant Sessions Judge, Jadu Pasi (P. W. 10) was tendered on behalf of the prosecution and was cross-examined on behalf of the petitioner on the 19th December, 1967. The prayer of the prosecution to cross-examine this witness was, however, rejected, Subsequently, a petition was filed on behalf of the prosecution by the Assistant District Prosecutor on the 20th December, 1967, for permission to cross-examine P. W. 10, which has been allowed by the order giving rise to the present application.

4. Mr. Parmeshwar Prasad Sinha, on behalf of the petitioner, has urged that the leanred Assistant Sessions Judge, having rejected the prayer for cross-examination of P.W. 10 on the 19th December, 1967, should not have allowed the same prayer on the 13th January, 1968, on the same set of facts. it is true that the learned Assistant Sessions Judge rejected the prosectuion prayer for cross-examining P. W. 10 on the 19th December, 1967, which he has allowed on the 13th January 1968, for the reasons stated in the order. The order passed by the Assistant Sessions Judge on the 19th December, 1967, not being a judgment within the meaning of Sec.369 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, no error seems to have been committed by the learned Assistant Sessions Judge in ordering for recall of the witness for his cross-examination. After all. the earlier order being in the nature of an interlocutory order it was open to the court below, in the ends of justice, to order for cross-examination of P. W. 10.

5. Mr. Sinha next urged that as P. W. 10 was not examined at any earlier stage and before the Sessions Court also he was only tendered, there was no previous statement of the witness from which it could be said that he had been gained over and there was no occasion for declaring him hostile. It will be relevant at this stage to refer to Sec.154 of the Evidence Act, which lays down :-

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"The Court may, in its discretion, permit the person who calls a witness to put any questions to him which might be put in cross-examination by the adverse party."

From a bare reading of the aforesaid section it is apparent that there is nothing in Sec.154 of the Evidence Act to warrant an inference that only when any previous statement of the witness is available and if he is alleged to have departed from that that the court can declare that witness hostile. To accept this extreme submission of the learned counsel is to read in the section such limitation, on the power of the court to allow cross-examination of a witness, by the party calling the witness, which is not there. This will very much limit its scope.

In the instant case, P. W. 10, in cross-examination on behalf of the petitioner on the 19th December, 1967, stated that the complainant was living with the petitioner only for the last about six months and prior to that she was living with her husband Gultain Pasi. It was on this account that the prosecution prayed to the court for cross-examining this witness.

6. Lear