Can a Judge hold out a threat to a witness that if he changed his statement then he would face a prosecution for perjury?
This was answered by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Ram Chander v. State of Haryana [(1981) 3 SCC 191] wherein it was observed by the Hon’ble Court that in an adversary system of trial the presiding officer of the Criminal Court, instead of being a mere spectator and a recording machine, must become a participant in the trial by evincing intelligent and active interest by putting questions to witnesses in order to ascertain the truth. Section 165 of the Evidence Act has invested wide powers in this regard. But the judge must exercise his powers 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 or intimidate the 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 and whose captain is the judge.
With respect to the facts of the case the Hon’ble Court held: “The questions put by the learned Sessions Judge, particularly the threats held out to the witnesses that if they changed their statements they would involve themselves in prosecutions for perjury were certainly intimidating, coming as they did from the presiding judge. The learned Sessions Judge appeared to have become irate that the witnesses were not sticking to the statements made by them under Section 161 and 164 and were probably giving false evidence before him. In an effort to compel them to speak what he thought must be the truth, the learned Sessions Judge, very wrongly, in our opinion, firmly rebuked them and virtually threatened them with prosecutions for perjury. He left his seat and entered the ring, we may say. The principle of ‘fair trial’ was abandoned. We find it impossible to justify the attitude adopted by the Sessions Judge and we also find it impossible to accept any portion of the evidence of PW8 and 9, the two alleged eye witnesses.”