The Supreme Court has held that the public cannot be given free access to a charge sheet or a final investigation report as it is not a public document and doing so will violate the rights of the victim, the accused and even the investigation agency.
In a judgment pronounced on Friday, a bench of justices MR Shah and CT Ravikumar said, “If all the chargesheets and relevant documents produced along with the chargesheets are put on the public domain or the websites of the state governments, it will be contrary to the scheme of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and it may as such violate the rights of the accused as well as the victim and/or even the investigating agency.”
The top court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by journalist Saurav Das, who demanded that all chargesheets or final reports since they are summaries of police investigations in criminal cases, should be uploaded on state government websites.
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Das referred to an SC’s 2016 decision in which it directed the police to upload first information reports (FIR) within 24 hours to suggest that if FIR, which are unsubstantiated allegations, can be made public, there is a greater need to disclose contents of a charge sheet, which is the investigation report on those charges.
The petitioner was represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan who cited provisions of the CrPC, Evidence Act and the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 and said that uploading chargesheets on the state website will induce transparency in the criminal justice system.
The bench refused to agree with the petitioner on every count. Countering the argument that a chargesheet is not a public document, the SC said, “On a conjoint reading of sections 173 and 207 of CrPC, the investigating agency is required to furnish the copies of the final report (chargesheet) along with the relevant documents to be relied upon by the prosecution to the accused and none others.”
“Copy of the chargesheet along with the necessary documents cannot be said to be public documents within the definition of ‘Public Documents’ as per section 74 of the Evidence Act….reliance placed upon section 74 and 76 of Evidence Act is misplaced,” it ruled.
Considering its 2016 decision on which the petitioner placed reliance, the Court said, “The directions issued by this Court (in youth bar association case) are in favour of the accused, which cannot be stretched to the public at large so far as the chargesheets are concerned.”
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“Putting the FIR on the website cannot be equated with putting the chargesheets along with the relevant documents on the public domain and the websites of the state governments,” it further said.
Advocate Bhushan submitted that section 4(2) of the RTI Act casts a duty on the public authorities to provide as much information suo moto to the public at regular intervals. To this, the bench said, “The reliance placed upon section 4(2) of the RTI Act is also misconceived and misplaced…Copies of the chargesheet and the relevant documents along with the chargesheet do not fall within section 4(1)(b) of the RTI Act (which specifies the information to be put in the public domain by all public authorities).”
The petition was filed last year and the Court had not issued notice on it to the Centre for seeking a response. As a result, the case was decided on preliminary submissions made by the petitioner without knowing the stand of the Centre or states on this issue.
