The court of judge S C Magare, Extra Joint District Judge and Additional Sessions Judge, Malegaon, on Wednesday turned down the prosecution’s request for calling a sketch artist for his examination in Case No 138/2019. The accused was arrested on 23 May 2019 based on the sketch drawn by an artist of Meda Arts.
The court observed that, “that perhaps learned Sp.P.P. might not have been impressed with their (PW4 & PW5) such oral evidence for establishing the identity of accused and to give a go-bye to any such oral evidence, he is now making a very faint and unnecessary attempts by making such application.”
It is to be noted that an identification parade of the accused had already been conducted in the presence of PW4, a Naib Tahsildar and PW5, a Talathi in the case. Further, the sketch artist from Meda Arts had drawn the facial sketch of the accused by talking to the victim girl at Civil Hospital, Malegaon.
Further, even if the Director/Artist has made any such facial sketch; still he can not be the identifier of this accused and therefore, his any such evidence is absolutely unwarranted, the court observed
The prosecution while pushing an application under Section 311 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) relied upon the fact that the sketch artist was not included in the list of witnesses due to an “oversight” and as a result could not be examined.
The defence counsel while opposing the application by Sp.P.P. under Section 311 of the CrPC said the prosecution was trying to delay the trial proceeding through the application and it was bad in law and hence should be rejected.
The court while rejecting the application said the prosecution has perhaps not taken into consideration the oral evidence given by the victim girl herself, the PW4 and PW5 and hence “there cannot be any go-bye to their such evidence.”
Note: PW stands for prosecution witness.
