Amendment status not verified — confirm the current text below against the official source.
Identification of accused. - The identification of an accused who is already known to the identifier is futile. Magistrates and Courts of appeal should be careful not to enlarge ar- rested persons on bail whose test identification is desired. Those marks which are prominent or note-worthy that they are likely to be recognised by a verbal description should be covered by slips of paper. If a subject has a large number of prominent marks on his face, the marks should not be covered at all. Small pox marks are usually so large in number that any attempt at concealing them with slips of paper would make the face totally unrecognisable. So the Court should be sure that a number of innocent men in the parade bear similar pox marks. So also no concealment of bored ears is required and all that is necessary is that the Magistrate should make sure that the parade contains a number of innocent men with similarly bored ears. If the Magistrate comes to entertain good cause for the belief that in order to avoid recognition a bearded criminal after committing the crime got himself shaved or vice versa it is open to him to defer the identification of the clean shaven suspect until he has grown a beard of the appropriate size, or to get the bearded suspect shaved. No violation of Article 20 of the Constitution occurs if the Magistrate does so. The process of identification involves the statement by the identifying witnesses that the particular properties identified were the subject-matter of the offence or the persons identified were concerned in the offence. This statement may be express or implied. The identifier may point out by his finger or touch the property of the person identified, may either nod his head or give his assent in answer of a question addressed to him or may make signs or gestures which are tantamount to saying that the particular property identified was the subject matter of the offence or the person identified was concerned in the offence. All these statements express or implied including the signs and gestures would amount to a communication of the fact of identification. The distinction between the mental act of identification and the communication thereof by the identifier to another person is logical and such communications are tantamount to statement made by the identifiers. The physical facts of identification has no separate existence apart from the statement involved in the very process of identification. Facts which establish the identity of an accused person are relevant under Section 9. As a general rule, the substantive evidence of a witness is a statement made in Court. The evidence of mere identification at the trial for the first time is from its very nature inherently of a weak character. The evidence in order to carry conviction should ordinarily clarify as to how and under what circumstances he came to pick out the particular accused person and the details of the part which the accused played in the crime in question with reasonable particularity. The purpose of a prior test identification, therefore, is to test and strengthen the trustworthiness of that evidence. It is accordingly considered a safe rule of prudence to generally look for corroboration of the sworn testimony of witnesses in Court as to identity of the accused who are strangers to them, in the form of earlier identification proceeding. There may, however, be exceptions to this general rule, when, for example, the Court is impressed by a particular witness, on whose testimony it can safely rely, without such or other corroboration. The identification parades belong to the investigation stage. They are generally held during the course of investigation with the primary object of enabling the witnesses to identify persons concerned in the offence, who were not previously known to them. Failure to hold test identification is not fatal in all cases. If the accused is well known to prosecution witnesses it would be waste of time to put him up for identification. If however, there is any doubt in the matter, the prosecution should hold identification parade. Where during the course of investigation of a case the accused files an application for holding an identification parade on allegation that the accused is not known to eye- witnesses and that application is rejected on the ground that charge-sheet against accused has been filed and the accused has been named by eye- witnesses, but during the course of the trial the allegation of the accused is found to be true, then the rejection of the application is not valid and unless there is some other evidence the trial will be liable to be vitiated.