Court Question- role of court

Ram Chander Vs State Of Haryana AIR 1981 SC 1036 

Evidence Act- sec 165- power of court to ask question- role of court in evidence

"“If a Criminal Court is to be an effective instrument in dispensing justice, the presiding judge must cease to be a spectator and a mere recording machine. He must become a participant in the trial by evincing intelligent active interest by putting questions to witnesses in order to ascertain the truth. The Court has wide powers and must actively participate in the trial to elicit the truth and to protect the weak and the innocent. It is the duty of a judge to discover the truth and for that purpose he may "ask any question, in any form, at any time, of any witness, or of the parties, about any fact, relevant or irrelevant". But this he must do, without unduly trespassing upon the functions of the public prosecutor and the defence counsel, without any hint of partisanship and without appearing to frighten, coerce, confuse, intimidate or bully witnesses. He must take the prosecution and the defence with him. The Court. the prosecution and the defence must work as a team whose goal is justice, a team whose captain is the judge. The judge, "like the conductor of a choir, must, by force of personality personality, induce his team to work in harmony; subdue the raucous, encourage the timid, conspire with the young, flatter and old”

“The Court, the prosecution and the defence must work as a team whose goal is justice, a team whose captain is the judge.”

Francis Coralie Mullin Vs The Administrator Union Territory of Delhi, 1981 CriLJ 306

Hon'ble Supreme Court of India observed, “the question which arises is whether the right to life is limited only to protection of limb or faculty or does it go further and embrace something more. We think that the right to life includes the right to live with human dignity and all that goes along with it, namely the bare necessaries of life such as adequate nutrition, clothing and shelter and facilities for reading, writing and expressing oneself in diverse forms, freely moving about and mixing and commingling with fellow human beings. Of course, the magnitude and content of the components of this right would depend upon the extent of the economic development of the country, but it must, in any view of the matter, include the right to the basic necessities of life and also the right to carry on such functions and activities as constitute the bare minimum expression of the human-self.”

Kirit Kumar Chaman Lal Kundaliya v. Union of India and Ors. (1981) 2 SCC 436

Once the documents are referred to in the grounds of detention it becomes the bounden duty of the detaining authority to supply the same to the detenu as part of the grounds or pari passu the grounds of detention.

State of M.P. V. Dayaram Hemraj AIR 1981 SC 2007

Confessional statement was not accepted by the courts on the ground, the confessional statement recorded by the Magistrate was in the form of question and answer. The record shows that he was virtually cross examined and whatever he said was in answer to leading questions put by the learned Magistrate.