Late production of seized electronic evidence allowed where omission was inadvertent; authenticity and Section 65B validity left for trial.

A court may permit the prosecution to produce compact discs that were already seized and referred to in the supplementary charge-sheet but were inadvertently omitted from the original filings, so long as no serious prejudice is caused to the accused. The Court treated this as a continuation of the settled principle allowing late production of material already forming part of the prosecution record, and held that later authority did not displace that rule. The stage for such production is not the stage for determining the CDs' authenticity, admissibility, or the ultimate validity of the Section 65B certificate; those issues remain for trial. The prosecution's request was therefore allowed and the appeals failed.

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Issues: Whether the prosecution could be permitted to place on record the compact discs that had been seized earlier but were omitted from the original and supplementary charge-sheets, and whether the question of their authenticity and the validity of the certificate under Section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 could be decided at that stage.

Analysis: The CDs had already been seized, sent for forensic analysis, and referred to in the supplementary charge-sheet. The omission was not of a new or undiscovered material but of articles already forming part of the prosecution material. The governing principle is that, where relevant documents or items were inadvertently not filed with the charge-sheet, the court may permit their subsequent production if no serious prejudice is caused to the accused. The earlier view permitting such production remained good law, and the later decisions relied upon by the appellant did not displace that principle. At the same time, the stage at which production is permitted is not the stage for deciding whether the CDs are authentic or whether the Section 65B certificate is ultimately valid.

Conclusion: The prosecution was rightly permitted to produce the CDs, and the challenge to that permission failed.

Final Conclusion: The appeals were dismissed, while leaving open the questions relating to identity, authenticity, admissibility, and the Section 65B certificate, which were to be examined at trial.

Ratio Decidendi: A court may permit production of material inadvertently omitted from the charge-sheet, including material already referred to in a supplementary report, provided the accused is not prejudiced and the issue of authenticity or admissibility is left to be decided at the appropriate stage of trial.

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