The main legal point established in the judgment is the requirement of a Certificate under Section 65B(4) of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 for the admissibility of electronic evidence, and the court's discretion to allow the same at a later stage if necessary.

JUDGMENT :

1. This Criminal Misc. Petition under Section 482 Cr.P.C. has been preferred claiming the following prayer:-

“It is, therefore most respectfully prayed that the application filed by the petitioner u/s 482 Cr.P.C. may be allowed and:

(i) The order dated 30.09.2022 passed by the learned Special Judge, SC/ST Act Cases, Udaipur may kindly be quashed and set aside and the application filed bythe accused petitioner for taking the CC TV footage on record as secondary evidence may kindly be allowed

(ii) defence may be allowed to exhibit mark and play the CD containing the CC TV footage and confront the eyewitnesses in cross examination;

(iii) proceedings pending before Special Judge, SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities Cases) Udaipur (sic.) in Criminal Misc. Case No. 168/2018 may kindly be quashed and set aside.

(iv) Any other appropriate order or direction which may be deemed just and proper in the facts and circumstances of the case may kindly be passed in favour of the petitioner.”

2. Brief facts of the case, as the pleaded facts and a perusal of the record would reveal, are that complainant-Mahendra Chhaparwal, his brother-Gajendra Chhaparwal, his uncle-Murli Chhaparwal and Rahul Tamboli were travelling on a motorcycle and a scooty, from Kanhaiya Petrol Pump towards their home, when three of the accused persons, namely, Sunil Lot @ Bunty, Deepak Chandel @ Guddu and Ramesh Chandel opened fire on the complainant party. That as a result of the same, Gajendra Chaparwal was declared dead upon being taken to a hospital, while Rahul Tamboli sustained injuries.

3. In the aforesaid factual backdrop, on 22.07.2018, an F.I.R. bearing No. 0299/2018, was lodged at Police Station Ambamata, Udaipur against the aforementioned three accused persons for the offences under Sections 147, 148, 149, 323, 302, 120-B IPC and under Sections 3/25 Arms Act, 1959. Upon investigation, a charge-sheet came to be filed on 14.10.2018, whereby four more persons were also arrayed, and charges for the offences under Sections 5/25 Arms Act, 1959 and under Sections 3(2) and 5(1) of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (as amended in 2015) were also levelled against all the accused persons, in addition to the charges mentioned in the aforesaid F.I.R.

4. The genesis of the present controversy is the CCTV footage, which was obtained by the concerned police authorities during the course of investigation, of Eklingnath Garden, on the basis of which the charge-sheet was filed against the accused. A copy of the same was also supplied to the accused persons, along with the charge-sheet. The copy of the said CCTV footage was supplied by way of a Compact Disc i.e. C.D. to the Court and the accused persons, however, the C.D. submitted to the Court broke, and hence the same could not be seen. Thereafter, the defence sought a direction to bring on record the call details, location and Rojnamcha report, for the period from 21.07.2018 to 15.08.2018, pertaining to the concerned witness(es), by way of an application under Section 91 Cr.P.C. before the learned Court below; which also came to be dismissed vide the impugned order. Subsequently, an application under Sections 65 and 65B of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 was filed seeking to treat the copy of the C.D. of the incident in question, which was given to the accused by the concerned police authorities, along with the charge-sheet, to be admissible, as a secondary evidence. However, the same came to be dismissed by the learned Court vide the impugned order dated 30.09.2022.

5. Learned counsel for the petitioner assails the impugned order on the ground that the same is not in consonance with the law laid down by the Hon’ble Apex Court in the judgment rendered in the case of Arjun Panditrao Khotkar Vs. Kailash Kushanrao Gorantyal and Ors. (2020) 7 SCC 1, and therefore the impugned order ought to be quashed and set aside. The attention of this Court was drawn to the following paragraphs of the aforesaid judgment:-

“50. We may h