A charge sheet is a final report prepared by the investigation or law enforcement agencies for proving the accusation of a crime in a criminal court of law. The report is basically submitted by the police officer in order to prove that the accused is connected with any offence or has committed any offence punishable under any penal statute having effect in India. The report entails and embodies all the stringent records right from the commencement of investigation procedure of lodging an FIR to till the completion of investigation and preparation of final report.
Once the charge sheet has been submitted to a criminal court of law , the court decides as to who among the accused has sufficient prima facie evidence against him to be put on trial. It is on the basis of the charge sheet and other finding of records, the magistrate frames the charge against the accused, whether to plead guilty or not. Charge sheet is an important mechanism which the magistrates scrutinizes and makes a pre-inquiry of it to understand the culpability of the offender in the crime. It is on the basis of the charge sheet the magistrate can keep reliance on the accusation framed but if the accused denies the reports of charges framed against him by the police during the course of investigation, then straight away without any further delay the matter comes for the stage of “Trial”.
However, it refers to a formal police record showing the names of each person brought in to the custody, the nature of the accusations, and the identity of the accusers. It is also known as four part charging instrument containing:
- Information about the accused and the witnesses.
- The charges and specifications
- The preferring of charges and their referral to a summary.
- For the trial record.
A charge sheet is distinct from the First Information Report (FIR), which is the core document that describes a crime that has been committed. It usually refers to one or more FIR(s). Once the charge sheet has been submitted to a court of law, prosecution proceedings begin in the judicial system. In India section 173 of criminal procedure code, 1973 contains the provision relating to charge sheet which form an pertinent part of the procedural law which embodies all the details relating to the name of the Informant/complainant, the accused and victim, any witness, items or articles seized, date ,time and place of occurrence of the crime, the name of the investigating officer, the medical reports if ant made, the FIR number, the true findings of the case diary etc.
Subhajit Chakraborty
Assistant Professor of Law
