Judgment

O. CHINNAPPA REDDY, J.:- It is one of the sad and distressing features of our criminal justice system that an accused person, resolutely minded to delay the day of reckoning, may quite conveniently and comfortably do so, if he can but afford the cost involved, by journeying back and forth, between the Court of first instance and the superior Courts, at frequent interlocutory stages. Applications abound to quash investigations, complaints and charges on all imaginable grounds, depending on the ingenuity of client and counsel. Not-in-frequently, so soon as a Court takes cognizance of a case requiring sanction or consent to prosecute, the sanction or consent is questioned as improperly accorded, so soon as a witness is examined or a document produced, the evidence is challenged as illegally received and many of them are taken up to the High Court and some of them reach this Court too on the theory that it goes to the root of the matter. There are always petitions alleging assuming the entire prosecution case to be true, no offence is made out, And, inevitably proceedings are stayed and trials delayed. Delay is a known defence tactic. With the passage of time, witnesses cease t