Amendment status not verified — confirm the current text below against the official source.
Exemption from personal appearance. - The provision of Section 342 CLP.Code appear to be intended to apply only to an accused in person and even when the personal attendance of the accused person has been dispensed with generally under Section 205, he must at any rate attend in person after the close of the prosecution evidence for the purpose of answering the questions which the Court bound to put to him at that stage. The mandatory provisions of Section 342, over-ride the discretionary powers given to a Court under Section 205. Section 342, apart from giving the Court the power to put any question at any time to the accused, imposes on it a duty to question the accused fully at the close of a prosecution case, and if this had not been intended to apply in the case of an accused whose personal attendance had been dispensed with either under Section 205 or Section 240 - A, it is hard to see why the exception was not specifically embodied in the section by way of a proviso.