Deciding Authority: Supreme Court of India
Name of the Judges: Justice Dalveer Bhandari, Justice Deepak Verma
Date of Judgment: 17 September 2010
Facts of the Case: This appeal was directed against the judgment and final order dated 13.10.2009 passed by the High Court of Delhi at New Delhi in Writ Petition (Crl.)No.1337 of 2009. The short controversy which arose in this appeal is regarding examination of a suicide note. In the order dated 4th February, 2010, the High Court observed, “In this view of the matter, the Investigating Officer shall obtain the Hindi handwriting of the deceased from the C.B.S.E. Board, if possible, and send the admitted Hindi handwriting of the deceased and the suicide notes for comparison to the FSL Laboratory as expeditiously as possible.” Admittedly, part of the suicide note was written in English and part of it was written in Hindi. Ms.Indira Jaisingh, learned Additional Solicitor General submitted that it was not possible to compare Hindi handwriting because Hindi records were not available. In this view of the matter, when her Hindi handwriting could not be compared, it became imperative that whatever had been written in the suicide note in English had to be examined by a handwriting expert to ascertain whether suicide note was in the handwriting of the deceased.
Judgment: The handwriting expert, in his opinion, had mentioned in his note that “the register marked A-4 containing the admitted English writings of deceased Pinki had not been considered in the examination.” In order to do complete justice, the Court deemed it appropriate that the suicide note of the deceased be sent to another handwriting expert and he must give a complete report of the words which have been mentioned in both Hindi and English. The handwriting expert would be selected by the concerned trial Court. The handwriting expert must send the report to the trial court as expeditiously as possible, in any event, within four weeks from the date of communication of the order of the trial Court.
Decision: With these observations, the impugned order was modified and the appeal was, accordingly, disposed of.
By: Roopali Mohan, 2nd Year, Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, New Delhi
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