A Delhi court has observed that courts should apply what it termed as “judicial mind” before passing a summoning order and that trial courts are under the obligation to “carefully scrutinise” the complaint. “Summoning anyone to face a criminal trial does affect one’s liberty, which has been considered as the most fundamental right of an individual and is enshrined as such in the Constitution of India,” special CBI judge Kanwal Jeet Arora observed. The court made the observation while hearing a revision petition filed by Delhi residents Satpal, Suraj, Kuldeep and Sarvan challenging the April 2, 2014 order of a metropolitan magistrate, that summoned them to face trial in a criminal complaint case filed by their tenant Pratima Dass. The petitioners had alleged that the complaint was filed by Dass just to create pressure on them so that they should not demand any rent from her, and that the trial court had failed to take into consideration “various other aspects” in the case. Upholding the summoning order by a metropolitan magistrate, the judge said that the scope of the court in its revisional jurisdiction was “limited” and was required to be exercised only if it was found that “some injustice” has resulted due to the order passed by the magisterial court. The court also observed that a person summoned by a judicial order to face a criminal trial has a “fundamental right” to know the offences for which he is summoned and that the court summoning him has to issue the process against him after “due deliberation” of the material before it. The court, upholding the summoning order, said, “In view of the facts alleged in the complaint and those deposed by the complainant in her pre-summoning evidence, I do not find any infirmity in the summoning order passed by metropolitan magistrate. the revision petition stands dismissed.” “The contentions advanced by petitioners involve certain disputed questions of facts. Neither these facts nor these contentions were raised before the trial court at the time of passing of the summoning order, as at that point of time it only had the complaint of the complainant and her pre-summoning evidence before it on the basis of which the impugned order was passed,” the court further said.
