2001 (10) TMI 1198

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.... granted. 2. It is very unfortunate that the High Court by the impugned judgment has interfered with an order passed by a trial magistrate permitting the complainant to produce a document though at the fag end of the trial. 3. In a prosecution launched by the appellant under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, the appellant completed the evidence including his own examinatio....

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....n the impugned judgment a learned single judge of the High Court held that production of the postal receipt at the said belated stage was only "to fill up the lacuna" and hence the same is impermissible in law. He, therefore, interfered with the order passed by the trial court and permission to produce the postal receipt was countermanded. The learned single judge has stated the following regardin....

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....n 165 of the Evidence Act, 1872, by saying that the court could not 'fill the lacuna in the prosecution case'. A lacuna in the prosecution is not to be equated with the fall out of an oversight committed by a public prosecutor during trial, either in producing relevant materials or in eliciting relevant answers from witnesses. The adage 'to err is human' is the recognition of the p....

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....sion of the case. Even a reading of Section 311 of the Code would show that Parliament has studded the said provision lavishly with the word "any" at different places. This would also indicate the widest range of power conferred on the court in that matter. It is so stated by this court in Ram Chander v. State of Haryana 1981CriLJ609. 7. We are of the opinion that the learned single judge of th....