Rohit v. State of Haryana
In the High Court of Punjab & Haryana
Crl. Misc. M-30516/2015
Before Justice Hari Pal Verma
Decided on May 17, 2016

Relevancy of the case: Quashing of order allowing documents of forged Facebook ID to be placed on record

Statutes and Provisions Involved

• The Information Technology Act, 2000 (Section 66C, 67)
• The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (Section 311, 482)
• The Indian Penal Code, 1860 (Section 469)

Relevant Facts of the Case

• An order was passed allowing documents of a forged Facebook ID to be placed on record, under Section 311 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
• This petition is filed for quashing the abovementioned order.

Prominent Arguments

• The petitioner’s counsel submitted that there is no provision in the CrPC to place on record any documents, and the object of Section 311 is to allow witnesses to appear. Referring to Section 311 of the CrPC, he said that the applicant while examining a witness can take on record the documents, but it has to be through that witness. The application filed by the respondent was very cryptic and evasive.
• An application by the respondents said that the documents in the case were inadvertently incomplete. The complainant simply wanted to place the complete documents on the file. Thus, they asked the court to allow the same.

Opinion of the Bench

• The complainant nowhere said that they wanted to place the computer-generated documents of forged Facebook ID on record, through any witness. The object of Section 311 was regarding the examination of a witness and not allowing the documents to be placed on record.

Final Decision

• Petition allowed.
• Impugned order set aside.

This case summary has been prepared by Akshita Rohatgi, an undergraduate student at the University School of Law and Legal Studies, GGSIPU, during her internship with The Cyber Blog India in January/February 2021.