‘No CrPC provision asks probe agency to file chargesheet in court language’

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has held there is no specific provision under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) which requires the investigating agency to file a chargesheet in the language of the court.

Section 272 of the CrPC, which deals with language of courts, says the state government may determine what shall be, for purposes of this Code, the language of each court within the state other than the High Court.

A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Rajesh Bindal gave the ruling while allowing the CBI’s appeal challenging the Madhya Pradesh High Court order, which asked the probe agency to provide a copy of the chargesheet to two Vyapam scam accused in Hindi.

The Vyapam or Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board scam broke out in 2013, wherein candidates had bribed officials and rigged exams by deploying imposters to write their answer sheets. The probe into the scam that began in 1995 was taken over by the central agency following an order of the Supreme Court in 2015. The racket involved politicians, senior officials and businessmen. The bench said: “Coming to the issue of the language of the final report/chargesheet under Section 173, there is no specific provision in CrPC which requires the investigating agency/officer to file it in the language of the Court determined in accordance with Section 272 of CrPC. Even if such a requirement is read into Section 173, per se, the proceedings will not be vitiated if the report is not in the language of the Court.” It said in a given case, if something which CrPC specifically requires to be done in the language of the Court is done in any other language, per se, the proceedings will not be vitiated unless it is established that the omission has resulted in failure of justice.

The bench said while deciding the issue of whether there is a failure of justice, the Court will have to consider whether the objection was raised at the earliest available opportunity. “Thus, the power of the State Government is to determine for the purposes of CrPC what shall be the language of the Courts within the State other than the High Court. The power under Section 272 is not a power to decide which language shall be used by the investigating agencies or the police for the purposes of maintaining the record of the investigation,” it said.