Amit Talukdar, J. - (1.) "8. Lacuna in the prosecution must be understood as the inherent weakness or a latent wedge in the matrix of the prosecution case. The advantage of it should orally go to the accused in the trial of the case, but an oversight in the management of the prosecution cannot be treated as irreparable lacuna. No party in a trial can be foreclosed from connecting errors. If proper evidence was not adduced or a relevant material was not brought on record due to any inadvertence, the Court should be magnanimous in permitting such mistakes to be rectified. After all, function of the criminal Court is administration of criminal justice and not to count errors committed by the parties or to find out and declare who among the parties performed better." The hallowed observations of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in the decision of Rejendra Prasad v. Narcotic Cell, through its Officer-in-charge, Delhi, (1999) 6 SCC 110 sets the signature-tune in this Revisional Application.
(2.) In a criminal trial which is a voyage of discovery the Master of the Vessel is, of course, the Presiding Officer and the two needless of the campus are the Prosecution and the Defence. While the Presiding Officer has every right to elicit the truth for arriving at his finding, the participants in the said voyage equally has the right to place before the Master facts which are germane for a proper decision.
(3.) Had it not been so; then obviously the provisions of Sections 91 & 311 of the Code of Criminal Procedure ("the said Code") and Section 165 of the Evidence Act ("the said Act") could have been rendered nugatory by now and had stood obliterated from the Statute Book like a dead-leaf.;