In a recent case namely Saurav Das v. Union of India and Ors.[1], the Apex Court dismissed a plea to publish chargesheets filed by the police, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in public domain and on government websites. In our attempt to effectively understand the judgment, it is essential to understand the concept of chargesheets.

Charge sheet refers to a formal police record showing the names of each person brought into custody, the nature of the accusations, and the identity of the accusers. It specifies every relevant detail about the accusation and the accused. It is necessary that a chargesheet is filed within 60 days in case of lower courts and 90 days in cases which are triable at Sessions Court.

The Court referred to Section 74 of the Indian Evidence Act in order to understand and interpret public documents. After having gone through the provisions of Section 74 of Indian Evidence that of Section 173 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Apex Court laid down that a chargesheet is not a public document.

Another reason for denying a chargesheet to be a public document is the need for the accused to be protected. The protection of the accused is exactly why an FIR is made publicly accessible. After the well-known D.K Basu case, the protection of rights of arrested persons became an issue of prime importance within the ambit of human rights. In order to bring out more transparency in police functioning across the nation, the Supreme Court on September 7, 2016 asked the States and Union Territories (UTs) to upload FIRs on their websites within 24 hours of their registration to protect the interest of the accused and their families.[2]

Basing their interpretation on the same lines, the Supreme Court, in the present case, stated that the uploading of chargesheet can also result in infringing the rights of the accused person. The Bench laid down as follows:

        “if the relief as prayed in the present petition is allowed and all the chargesheets and relevant documents produced along with the chargesheets are put on the public domain or on the websites of the state governments, it will be contrary to the scheme of the Criminal Procedure Code and it may as such violate the rights of the accused as well as the victim and/or even the investigating agency.”[3]

The Court also stated that this does not fall within the purview of citizens’ right to remain informed as it is not the process of investigation to reflect transparency; filing of a chargesheet is the end of investigation and beginning of a trial and hence, it cannot be equated with the uploading of FIR.