Supreme Court: Accused in a CBI case may inspect unrelied documents and seek specific ones at trial; stage depends on the document
The question: At what stage can an accused obtain documents the prosecution has not relied upon: at framing of charges, or later in the trial?
The Supreme Court on 25 September 2026 set aside orders of a CBI Special Judge in Ranchi that had directed the agency to produce a list of documents sought by an accused at the stage of framing of charges. A bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran did not decide the wider question of whether an accused can demand 'unrelied upon' documents at that stage. It proceeded on the premise that an accused is entitled to the documents available with the prosecuting agency to shape his defence, held that the stage at which they can be sought has to be looked at document by document, and laid down a practical route for each category sought. The respondent, Anil Dixit, an accused in a case registered by the CBI (RC 12A/2014-R), had applied under Section 91 of the Code of Criminal Procedure for ten categories of documents. They included seizure memos, the CBI's daily diary, FIR and letter dispatch registers for October and November 2014, the source information report and its verification, all documents seized but not relied upon in the charge sheet, minutes of several Building Committee meetings, videography of evaluation committee meetings, the minutes of a meeting on 21 January 2012, the expression of interest and technical bid, and the appointment files of two architect firms that were named in the FIR but not charge-sheeted. The Special Judge No. 1, CBI, Ranchi, allowed the application on 21 September 2019. The CBI filed a compliance report producing some documents, resisting others and stating that some were not in its possession. A further application led to an order of 18 July 2022, which the impugned order affirmed. The CBI then came to the Supreme Court.