High Court: No bar on taking cognisance of 1st chargesheet without FSL report

Kolkata: Trial courts can take cognisance of preliminary chargesheets even if it is not accompanied with a forensic report, observed Calcutta High Court while denying bail to an accused in an NDPS case.

The bench of Justice Arijit Banerjee and Justice Apurba Sinha Roy was dealing with a matter where it was argued that the magistrate couldn’t have taken cognisance of the first chargesheet which was submitted without a FSL report on the substance allegedly found on the accused.

It was argued that without the FSL report, the chargesheet and investigation remains incomplete since it cannot be ascertained as to whether the substance was a narcotic. The magistrate should only take cognisance of a chargesheet submitted after complete investigation along with the forensic report.

The court observed that though the word cognisance is not defined anywhere in the definition clause or in CrPC, it indicates a stage when the court is primarily satisfied about the possible occurrence of any offence defined under the law. Taking cognizance of offence by the court is at the nascent stage of the proceeding when the court takes judicial notice of the offence. The stage of taking cognizance cannot be equated with the stage of framing of charge where further scrutiny is done.

The CrPC does not prescribe any power to the concerned court to defer its decision of taking cognizance when the primary charge sheet is submitted before it. In this case, the sample of contraband article was sent to the laboratory but unfortunately the laboratory could not submit the report at the time of submission of the

primary chargesheet.

The court rejected bail, observing the accused did not exercise his right of statutory bail after expiry of 180 days period and neither was the chemical report challenged.