While underscoring right to fair trial under Article 21, Rajasthan High Court held that if the prosecution was relying upon the contents of a DVD/pen drive which were also submitted along with the charge-sheet, the accused had to be mandatorily given a cloned copy of the DVD/pen drive, to enable him to present an effective defence during the trial.

“…all documents including “electronic record” produced for the inspection of the Court along-with the police report and which prosecution proposes to use against the accused must be furnished to the accused as per the mandate of Section 207 of the 1973 Code. The concomitant is that the contents of the DVD/pen drive must be furnished to the accused, which can be done in the form of cloned copy of the DVD /pendrive.”

At the same time, the bench of Justice Anoop Kumar Dhand observed that in cases where the issue of privacy of the complainant/victim/prosecutrix or his/her identity was involved, the Court was justified in providing the inspection of such DVD/Pen drive only to the accused and his/her lawyer or expert.

For context, the Court was hearing a petition wherein application filed by the accused-petitioner seeking copy of the DVD/pen drive which was submitted along with the charge-sheet against him, was dismissed.

A charge sheet was filed against the petitioner and apparently, entire incident was recorded in the CCTV footage, which was collected by the police in a DVD and pen-drive, and submitted along with the charge-sheet.

These DVD and pen-drive were not supplied to the petitioner who filed an application seeking a copy, which was rejected by the court on the ground that no such request was made by the petitioner when the copy of charge-sheet was supplied to him.

The petitioner argued that as per Section 207, CrPC, since the electronic evidence was part of the charge sheet, it had to be mandatorily provided to him to ensure fair trial, and the reasoning given by the trial court could not be a ground to reject such application.

After hearing the contentions, while agreeing with the arguments put forth by the petitioner, the Court held that,

“As per the mandate contained under Section 207 Cr.P.C., the prosecution is supposed to supply each and every document/ evidence to the accused-petitioner for conducting fair trial. It appears that the prosecution is going to rely upon the aforesaid electronic evidence against the accused-petitioner, hence, the prosecution as well as the Trial Court is supposed to supply a copy of these electronic evidence to the accused-petitioner for the purpose of conducting fair trial.”

The Court stated that furnishing documents to the accused under Section 207, CrPC was a facet of right to fair trial under Article 21, and unless the electronic evidence was provided to the petitioner, he would not be able to put his defence in a proper way.

It was observed that any other view would not only violate the statutory mandate under CrPC but also the right of an accused to fair trial recognized under Article 21.

“But in cases involving the issue of privacy of the complainant/witness/victim/prosecutrix or his/her identity, the Court may be justified in providing the inspection only thereof to the accused and his/her lawyer or expert for presenting the effective evidence during the trial. The Court can issue effective directions to balance the interest of both sides.”

Accordingly, the order passed by the trial court was set aside and it was directed to supply a cloned copy of the DVD/pen drive to the petitioner.

Title: Amar Singh v State of Rajasthan

Citation: 2026 LiveLaw (Raj) 399

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