The duty to prepare and put questions to the accused under Section 313 Cr. P.C. rests with the Courts only, and the assistance of the prosecutor or defence counsel in preparing relevant questions does not absolve the Court from its primary duty to personally ascertain incriminating evidence and examine the accused.

JUDGMENT :

Swarana Kanta Sharma, J.

The present revision petition under Sections 397/401 read with Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 (hereinafter ‘Cr.P.C.’) has been filed by the petitioner i.e. Central Bureau of Investigation (hereinafter ‘CBI’) assailing the orders dated 05.03.2018 and 31.03.2018 passed by learned Special Judge (P.C. Act), CBI, Karkardooma Courts, New Delhi (hereinafter ‘Trial Court’) in case bearing CBI No. 31/2016 arising out of RC No. 57(A)/1999, registered at CBI, ACB, New Delhi whereby learned Trial Court had directed CBI/petitioner to prepare a draft of incriminating evidence for putting questions to the accused persons for examination under Section 313 of Cr. P.C. and had consequently imposed cost upon CBI/petitioner for not filing the incriminating evidence.

2. In a nutshell, the present case was registered on the basis of source information that accused Sh. S.K. Gosh, while being employed as Chief Managing Director at Bharat Aluminium Company Limited (BALCO) during the year 1998-1999, had hatched a criminal conspiracy with co-accused (i) Sh. P.C. Aggarwal, Director (Commercial), BALCO, (ii) Sh. G.S. Sandhu, General Manager (C&E), (iii) Sh. Parveen N. Shah, Director, Anish Metals Pvt. Ltd. and (iv) Sh. Kirti Shah, Director, Anish Metals Pvt. Ltd., in order to cause wrongful pecuniary loss to BALCO and to misuse his official position as a public servant for obtaining unlawful gain to co-accused persons namely Sh. Parveen N. Shah and Sh. Kirti Shah.

3. After completion of investigation, charge-sheet was filed before the learned Trial Court under Sections 420/120B of Penal Code, 1860 and Section 13(2)/13(l)(d) of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 and charges were framed against the accused persons on 03.01.2012. During the course of trial, the prosecution examined 23 prosecution witnesses and the matter was fixed for examination of accused persons under Section 313 Cr. P.C. for 04.01.2018.

4. By way of present petition, it is submitted by the petitioner that on 04.01.2018, learned Trial Court had verbally directed CBI to submit draft questions containing incriminating evidence two days prior to the next date of hearing which was 20.01.2018. It is stated that 61 draft questions were submitted by the concerned Prosecutor which were then supplied to the accused persons also on 20.01.2018, and the matter was fixed for further examination on 03.02.2018. Thereafter, on the next date, draft of question number 62 to 104 was submitted by CBI to the learned Trial Court, however, the Court had observed that the speed of projecting incriminating evidence was too slow on the part of CBI and had directed that entire incriminating evidence be filed before the next date of hearing.

5. It is stated that the prosecution could not file the draft of entire incriminating evidence on 05.03.2018, as the concerned Prosecutor was on leave due to the reason that his son had suffered head injury and due to his engagement in other official assignments. It is also stated that in the same Court, there were total four cases which were getting fixed for recording the statement of the accused under Section 313 Cr. P.C. one after the other and the prosecution/CBI had prepared draft questions in three other cases also.

6. Thereafter, the learned Trial Court vide order dated 05.03.2018, imposed cost to the tune of Rs. 16,600/- upon the petitioner/CBI and passed certain remarks on its conduct. The said order is reproduced as under:

“05.03.2018 (At 10.55 a.m.)

Present : Sh. U.C. Saxena, Sr. P.P. for CBI alongwith Insp. Sudeep Punia, HIO.

Sh. Dharamvir Singh, SP (SDOP), CBI alongwith Insp. Subhash Chander, Incharge Summon Cell, CBI.

All the five accused persons are present in person on bail.

Sh. Anil Kumar, counsel for A-1.

Sh. Shiv Shankar Singh, counsel for A-2.

Sh. Prashant Jain, counsel for A-4 and A-5.

All the five accused persons have filed their answers with the attested set of questions supplied to them i.e. from Sr. No. 62 to 104.