Patna High Court censures trial judge accused of demanding bribe, passing summons based on hearsay

The Patna High Court recently took serious exception to a trial judge's order summoning a man as a murder accused based on inadmissible evidence and newspaper hearsay [Deepak Kumar v. The State of Bihar]. .In a judgment delivered on May 27, Justice Ansul noted that the Bhagalpur trial judge's order suffered from "complete illegality" and was passed in a case "actuated by malafide."“Apart from complete absence of materials, this Court finds that the case is attended and actuated by malafide from the very beginning and the petitioner has been implicated in this case in the mode and manner which apparently seems malafide,” it observed.The High Court further held that the trial judge had relied on material that could not legally form the basis for summoning an additional accused during trial."The court in the exercise of complete illegality starts refering to the statement of five witnesses under Section 164 CrPC and he has extensively refered to the same. He states that this is the statement which is very specific and there is a good ground to invoke Section 319 IPC." it noted. Pertinently, the High Court also noted that the person summoned by the trial judge had alleged that the judge had sought bribes from him and he had reported the same to the Patna High Court's inspecting judge..The case arose from the murder of a fruit trader in Bhagalpur in June 2012. While the petitioner, one Deepak Kumar, was not named in the First Information Report (FIR), his name surfaced during the investigation several months later.Statements were recorded alleging that Deepak had financed the murder. However, he was not chargesheeted in the case. The Court noted that the investigation was later taken away from the supervision of the then Senior Superintendent of Police and a final report was ultimately filed in Deepak’s favour.The matter resurfaced during the trial. In August 2019, an Additional District Judge in Bhagalpur summoned Deepak as an additional accused and directed that he face trial in the murder case.Deepak challenged this order before the High Court, arguing that there was no evidence produced during the trial that justified summoning him as an accused..The High Court’s examination of the record revealed a series of unusual circumstances surrounding the case.The Court noted Deepak’s allegations that the trial judge had sought money from him through an additional public prosecutor and that he later complained about the matter to the inspecting judge of the Patna High Court. Deepak claimed to have provided video recordings in support of these allegations.The Court further noted Deepak’s claim on affidavit that the judicial officer who passed the summoning order was subsequently found guilty in disciplinary proceedings before the High Court.However, it stopped short of calling for the records of the disciplinary proceedings stating that it will amount to "washing dirty linen in public"..The trial judge's summoning order was primarily on the basis of the testimony of the deceased fruit seller's mother, who alleged that Deepak had financed the murder.However, as the High Court later noted, the deceased's mother herself admitted that her information came from a newspaper report. The trial judge nevertheless treated the statement as sufficient to summon Deepak and also relied on statements recorded during the investigation.Justice Ansul also took note of the circumstances surrounding the investigation. The Court recorded that the investigating officer of the case had later faced action both before the National Human Rights Commission and in departmental proceedings..While examining these circumstances, the Court made it clear that many of these factors were not by themselves determinative of the legal issue before it..On the testimonies, the Court found that out of eleven prosecution witnesses, ten had not made any allegation against Deepak.The only witness who implicated him was the deceased’s mother and that too, based on a newspaper report. “The learned Sessions Judge took this into consideration without even looking at para-5 of the deposition where the lady states that this information came to her through newspaper,” the Court observed..The Court ultimately held that the evidence relied upon by the trial court fell far short of the legal threshold required to summon a person as an accused during an ongoing trial.Referring to the allegations surrounding the investigation, the conduct of witnesses, the final report filed in Deepak’s favour and the circumstances in which he was later summoned as an accused, the Court ultimately observed,“This is a case which has the look of malafide written all over it.”Hence, it proceeded to quash the summoning order..[Read Judgment].Deepak Kumar v. The State of Bihar