The trial Judge is not a mere post office to frame the charge at the instance of the prosecution.
In M.E. Shivalingamurthy vs. Central Bureau of Investigation Bengaluru, (2020) 2 SCC 768, this Court has held as under: –
“17. This is an area covered by a large body of case law. We refer to a recent judgment which has referred to the earlier decisions viz. P. Vijayan v. State of Kerala and discern the following principles:
17.1. If two views are possible and one of them gives rise to suspicion only as distinguished from grave suspicion, the trial Judge would be empowered to discharge the
accused.
17.2. The trial Judge is not a mere post office to frame the charge at the instance of the prosecution.
17.3. The Judge has merely to sift the evidence in order to find out whether or not there is sufficient ground for proceeding. Evidence would consist of the statements recorded by the police or the documents produced before the Court.
17.4. If the evidence, which the Prosecutor proposes to adduce to prove the guilt of the accused, even if fully accepted before it is challenged in cross-examination or rebutted by the defence evidence, if any, “cannot show that the accused committed offence, then, there will be no sufficient ground for proceeding with the trial”.
17.5. It is open to the accused to explain away the materials giving rise to the grave suspicion.
17.6. The court has to consider the broad probabilities, the total effect of the evidence and the documents produced before the court, any basic infirmities appearing in the case and so on. This, however, would not entitle the court to make a roving inquiry into the pros and cons.
17.7. At the time of framing of the charges, the probative value of the material on record cannot be gone into, and the material brought on record by the prosecution, has to be accepted as true.
17.8. There must exist some materials for entertaining the strong suspicion which can form the
basis for drawing up a charge and refusing to discharge the accused.
18. The defence of the accused is not to be looked into at the stage when the accused seeks to be discharged under Section 227 CrPC (see State of J&K v. Sudershan Chakkar). The expression, “the record of the case”, used in Section 227 CrPC, is to be understood as the documents and the articles, if any, produced by the prosecution. The Code does not give any right to the accused to produce any document at the stage of framing of the charge. At the stage of framing of the charge, the submission of the accused is to be confined to the material produced by the police (see State of Orissa v. Debendra Nath Padhi).”
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