Delhi High Court: Suresh Kumar Kait, J. allowed a criminal petition filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation seeking to set aside the order passed by the Special Judge (PC Act), insofar as it directed CBI to produce the Final Report.
Nikhil Goel, Special Public Prosecutor with Naveen Goel, Dushyant Sarna and Piyo Harold, Advocates, represented CBI. It was submitted the Final Report could only be summoned under special circumstances.
The High Court perused the impugned order and noted that it was clearly mentioned therein that as per the mandate of Section 172 CrPC, the custody of the diaries has to be with the Investigation Officer. It was clearly mentioned that under exceptional circumstances, Final Report can be summoned by the Court for its exclusive perusal if necessary, but not as a routine.
It was noted that the Special Judge, though summoned the Final Report, did not disclose as to what were the exceptional circumstances under which the Final Report was summoned.
In such view of the matter, without going into the controversy further, the High Court set aside the impugned order to the extant of summoning of the Final Report. The case was remanded back to the Special Judge to pass order afresh by giving reasons as to what are the exceptional circumstances due to which the Final Report was required.[CBI v. Vallalore Rangaswamy Natarajan, 2019 SCC OnLine Del 10197, decided on 20-09-2019]
