Character of statement record u/s 164 of the accused.

This is an application by the Public Prosecutor, Madras, to revise the order of the Town Sub-Magistrate, City I, Coimbatore, The respondent and some others have been arrested in connection with counterfeiting currency notes and they have been remanded to custody. The investigation is not yet complete and the charge-sheet has not yet been filed. In the course of the investigation statements have been recorded under section 164, Criminal Procedure Code. The respondent applied for copies of those statements. The Magistrate has directed copies of those statements to be granted to the respondent. Against this order directing the grant of copies to the respondent, the present revision has been filed by the Public Prosecutor. The contention of the learned Public Prosecutor is that these copies are not to be granted at this stage, that is, before the filing of the charge-sheet. He had also contended that even after the filing of the charge-sheet, copies of those statements should not be granted unless they form part of the record, though in the objection filed by the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Crime Branch, C.I.D., Sri R. N. Krishnaswami, he has stated that the accused are entitled to such copies only after the charge-sheet is filed.

The question for consideration before me now is whether copies of the statements under section 164, Criminal Procedure Code, can be granted at this stage, that is, before the filing of the charge-sheet.

That these documents fall under section 74 (1) (iii) of the Evidence Act seems to me to be clear. The other question is whether the accused has a right to inspect and demand a copy of the same on payment of the usual charges. On the question as to who is a person who has a right to inspect the public document mentioned in section 74 of the Evidence Act, there is no indication in the Evidence Act. In the Criminal Procedure Code also there is no indication. The Criminal Procedure Code does not deal with the public documents as such and so the question as to who has a right to inspect such a document and demand a copy is not dealt with therein. The question has therefore to be decided on the case-law on the subject.

In Queen Empress v. Arumugam1, the question that arose was as to whether reports made by a Police Officer in compliance with sections 157, 168 and 173, Criminal Procedure Code, are public documents within the meaning of section 74 of the Evidence Act and consequently an accused person is entitled before trial to have copies of such reports. That is a decision of a Full Bench of this Court, consisting of four Judges. Subramania Ayyar and Davies, JJ., who heard the case in the first instance referred the matter to a Full Bench. In the Order of Reference made by them, they say, with reference to documents under sections 157, 168, and 173 that:

“.......in the eye of the law, every person has a right to inspect public documents subject to certain exceptions, provided he shows he is individually interested in them . . .....In Mutter v. Eastern & Midlands Railway Company1 Lindley, L.J., with the concurrence of the Lords Justices Cotton and Bowen laid down the rule thus: ‘When the right to inspect and take a copy is expressly conferred by statute, the limit of the right depends on the true construction of the statute. When the right to inspect and take a copy is not expressly conferred, the extent of such right depends on the interest which the applicant has in what he wants to copy and what is reasonably necessary for the protection of such merest. The common law right to inspect and take copies of public documents is limited by this principle as is shown by the judgment in Rex v. Justice of Staffordshire3 . In the case mentioned by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Denman, Chief Justice, observed that for the persons interested Every Officer appointed by law to keep records ought to deem himself for that purpose (for the production of documents) ‘a trustee’.”

The Reference then came before