Accused can submit tapes as defence: SC

NEW DELHI: prosecution has been using electronic evidence to seek conviction of accused for a decade but for the first time the supreme court on Monday permitted an accused to bring on record taped telephonic conversation to prove his innocence in a child sexual abuse case the ruling assumes significance as the SC reversed concurrent decision of a trial court and Punjab and Haryana high court which has rejected the accused plea to produce the recorded telephonic conversation between his wife and son with the girl’s father to drive home that he had been framed because of a lingering property dispute with the girl’s family. The accused has moved to trial court to take on record the telephonic conversation
The accused had moved the trial court to take on record a compact disc purportedly containing telephonic conversation between sanded verma (the girl’s father) and the Saurabh(the accused son) and meena kumara(the accused wife) he had pleaded with the trial court to get the authenticity tested by a forensic laboratory and match it with voice samples taken from the persons featuring in the conversation allowing appeal by the accused a bench of justice’s Dipak Misra and P.C Pant said the CD qualified to treated as a document under the evidence act “on the document filed by defence, endorsement of admission or denial by the public prosecutor is sufficient and defence will have to prove the document if not admitted by the prosecution” it said. The SC said the accused Shamsher Singh Verma had claimed during his examination that he had been implicated in the case due to a property dispute. Though the SC refused to delve into the authenticity of the conversation, it said “we are of the view that the courts below have erred in law in not allowing the application of the defence to play the compact disc relating to conversation between father of the victim and son and wife of the appellant(accused) regarding alleged property dispute “in our opinion, the courts below have erred in law in rejecting the application to play the compact disc in question to enable the public prosecutor to admit deny and to get it sent to the forensic science laboratory by the defence” writing the judgment  for the bench, J. Pant, “the appellant is in jail and there appears to be no intention on his part to unnecessarily linger the trail, particularly when the prosecution witnesses have been examined”
“therefore without expressing opinion as to the final merits of the case this appeal is allowed and the orders passes by the high court are set aside.”