The main legal point established in the judgment is that seeking expert examination during the defence evidence stage of a criminal trial is impermissible under the Code of Criminal Procedure, and expert opinion regarding typewritten matters is not relevant under the Evidence Act.

1. During the stage of defence evidence in a criminal trial, the accused filed an application in the trial court praying for forwarding a document to the Forensic Science Laboratory for its expert opinion on a certain aspect. But the trial court dismissed the application by the impugned order. The accused has, therefore, filed this petition under S.482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (for short 'the Code') for quashing the order.

2. Prosecution proceedings against the petitioner/ accused were initiated when the Registrar of the High Court filed a complaint against him in the court of Chief Judicial magistrate alleging that the accused produced before the High Court a forged document purporting to be a bank guarantee. Learned Chief Judicial Magistrate took cognizance of the offences alleged and the trial proceeded against the petitioner upto defence evidence stage. Petitioner then filed an application in the trial court praying that the questioned document (which has been marked as Ext. P10 in the trial court) may be forwarded to the Forensic Science Laboratory along with another document (which is said to be the verification report submitted to the same bank) for ascertaining whether both documents were type-written on the same typewriter. Learned Chief Judicial. Magistrate, while dismissing the application, has stated as follows: "The company may manufacture more than one typewriter having identical letters. The similarity of the letters by itself is not sufficient to come to a conclusion that it was typed in the very same typewriter. As contended by learned Public Prosecutor no useful purpose will be served by sending these two documents, I do not find any reason to allow the request of the petitioner".

3. On the facts, I have no reason to take a different view since the expert opinion (sought to be elicited from the scientist) can, at the most, be that both documents could have been typewritten on similar or identical typewriting machines. More than that cannot be reported by the scientist because the type-writer on which the questioned document was type-written is not available with the Forensic Science Laboratory. Even if the laboratory would report that both documents could have been typewritten on identical machines what is the use of such a report for the accused has not been explained' by the petitioner. Prosecution has an allegation that this is a tactic adopted by the petitioner for protraction.

4. That apart, it is doubtful whether any expert opinion on typewritten scripts is admissible in evidence. S.45 of the Evidence Act which deals with opinion of expert says that "when the court has to form an opinion upon a point of foreign law or of science or art, or as to identity of hand-writing or finger impressions, the opinions upon that point, of persons specially skilled in such foreign law, science or art or in questions of identity of handwriting or finger impressions are relevant facts". In Hanumant v. State of Madhya Pradesh (AIR 1952 SC 343), a bench of three judges of the Supreme Court (Mahajan S.R. Das & Bhagavathi, JJ) had stated that the opinion of expert that a particular letter was typed on a particular machine does not fall within the ambit of S.45 of the Evidence Act and is inadmissible. Of course, in State v. Choudhari (1990 (2) SC 481), a Bench of two judges of the Supreme Court (S.R. Pandyan and Jayachandra'Reddy, JJ) expressed an opinion that the ratio laid down in Hanumant's case has to be examined by a larger bench due to the fact that "by march of time, there is rapid development in the field of Forensic Science and therefore, it has become imperative to match the said march of modern vistas of scientific knowledge, the question whether the opinion of an expert in regard to a typescript would fall within the ambit of S.45 of the Evidence Act has to be decided". Nonetheless, the law laid down by the Supreme Court in Hanumant's case remains unaltered even now. The legal position as on tod