Since there was 1 judgment from a 3-judge bench of Supreme Court which said Preliminary Inquiry is mandatory u/s 340 CrPC, the 2-judge bench in this case, referred this point to a Larger bench.
From Para 14,
14. In any event, given that the decision of the three-Judge Bench in Sharad Pawar (supra) did not assign any reason as to why it was departing from the opinion expressed by a Coordinate Bench in Pritish (supra) regarding the necessity of a preliminary inquiry under Section 340 of the CrPC, as also the observations made by a Constitution Bench of this Court in Iqbal Singh Marwah (supra), we find it necessary that the present matter be placed before a larger Bench for its consideration, particularly to answer the following questions:
(i) Whether Section 340 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 mandates a preliminary inquiry and an opportunity of hearing to the would-be accused before a complaint is made under Section 195 of the Code by a Court?
(ii) What is the scope and ambit of such preliminary inquiry?
15. Accordingly, we direct the Registry to place the papers before the Hon’ble Chief Justice for appropriate orders.
This was answered by a three-judge bench as follows:
Citations :
Other Sources :
Index of Perjury case laws is here.
