A man convicted of sexually abusing a six-year-old girl challenged the order in court, contending that no test identification (TI) parade had been held to establish that he was the accused. The Supreme Court rejected his submission. The court held that since the offence had been proven by medical evidence and the victim, who knew the offender, had identified him before lodging an FIR, a TI parade would have been futile (Jameel vs State of Maharashtra).
Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that a witness cannot be recalled to the stand just because some questions could not be put to him earlier. Especially when the concerned witness, the plaintiff in the case under discussion, had already been cross-examined in 2005 and his testimony had run to more than two pages of court notes. The defendant had also been examined in 2006. The court felt that in this case the application for recalling the witness after such a long period of time was made just to delay the court proceedings (Binder Singh vs Babu Ram).
A co-operative housing society issued notifications for acquisition of some land in 1984. In 1998, Karnataka High Court quashed those notifications on grounds of fraud, primarily because it was found that the housing society was not a bona fide one. Subsequently, some other landowners who had been issued similar notices by the same housing society, challenged these notifications in court. Treating the earlier case as precedence, the high court ruled in the petitioners’ favour. The housing society challenged Karnataka High Court’s order in the Supreme Court. One of the grounds was that the landowners had not only moved court after 14 years but had also willingly agreed to sell their land to the co-operative society. The court rejected the application, holding that when the notification itself is mala fide, then delay in filing a petition makes no difference. The fact that the landowners had agreed to business dealings with the society was of no importance (Vyalikaval House Building Co-operative Society vs V. Chandrappa).
SOLON
