TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1999 (10) TMI 165
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....tna in August 1986. It appears that the High Court had suspended the sentence passed on the appellants pending disposal of the appeal. On 3-8-1998 the appeal stood listed before a Single Judge of the High Court. But the Counsel engaged by the appellants did not turn up and hence learned Single Judge proceeded to hear the Counsel for the State alone and then dismissed the appeal on merits. Appellants have therefore come up to this Court aggrieved by the aforesaid judgment of the High Court. 3. Shri P.S. Misra, learned Senior Counsel who argued for the appellants did not endeavour to justify the absence of the Counsel for the appellants before the High Court when the case was called for arguments, nor are we interested in knowing why th....
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....lt to agree with the suggestion in Ram Naresh Yadav case (AIR 1987 SC 1500) that if the appellant or his pleader is not present, the proper course would be to dismiss an appeal for non-prosecution". 5. Nonetheless the learned Chief Justice hastened to add that if the Counsel is absent there is nothing in law which precludes the Court of appeal from appointing another counsel at state's expense to assist the court. The following observations of the bench are pertinent: We would, however, hasten to add that if the accused is in jail and cannot, on his own, come to court, it would be advisable to adjourn the case and fix another date to facilitate the appearance of the accused/appellant if his lawyer is not present. If the lawyer is abs....
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....ss. A large volume of evidence has been adduced. No doubt the stake involved in the appeal for the large number of convicted persons is obviously very high, particularly, in view of the sentence of rigorous imprisonment for 10 years imposed on each of them. Hence any supercilious dealing of their case will be at the risk of serious miscarriage of justice. 9. As a matter of legal position the court is not precluded from perusing the records and come to its own conclusion unaided by any legal practitioner to project the points favourable to the accused, when the counsel engaged by them does not turn up to argue. But the three Judge Bench of this Court indicated in Bani Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh [1996 (4) SCC 720] that it is a matt....
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.... Judge which looms large in the aforesaid passage. He took into account a set of legally forbidden materials in reaching the conclusion. It is trite that whatever a witness had stated to the investigating officer can not be used as evidence. Section 162 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which incorporated the aforesaid prohibition,permits such statements to be used only for the limited purpose of contradicting the witness in certain circumstances. 12. What is more disconcerting to us is, how the learned Single Judge discarned that PW-6, PW-8 and PW-14 had spoken such things to the Investigating Officer because in one of the earlier paragraphs of the impugned judgment learned Single Judge has pointed out that the Investigating Officer....