26 injury of the accused persons, and more pertinently, Neha’s statement having arrived on her Scooty and telling one of the boys to take the other injured boy to the hospital. PW-10 also contradicted himself regarding what brought him to the police station and regarding the TIP. In his examination-in-chief, he stated that a woman constable was present at the TIP, whereas during cross-examination, the witness stated that no woman constable was present at such proceedings. Further, while PW-12 the tehsildar, PW-18 Pratap Kumar Agasia, and PW-11 Raju Sen, stated that both PW-10 and PW-11 appeared for the TIP together, PW10 did not mention the presence of PW-11 on such day. It was furthermore, urged that PW-10’s credibility was questionable as he appeared to be a stock witness – he deposed during his cross-examination that he had previously appeared as a witness for the prosecution in another case registered at PS Palasia. 48. Mr. Singh urged that the prosecution did not give any explanation about the delay in conducting the TIP proceedings, given that PW-10 had informed about him sighting three persons on 20.06.2011, barely a day after the incident; whereas the TIP was conducted much later on 14.07.2011, by which date the photographs of the accused had been published in newspapers. Reliance was placed on the judgments of this court which observed that a delay in a TIP must be explained to place reliance on the testimony of a witness. Reference is made to this court’s judgments in State of Andhra Pradesh v. Dr. M.V. Ramana Reddy & Ors.19 and Rajesh Govind Jagesha v. State of Maharashtra20. It was submitted that apart from being delayed, and procedurally questionable, the TIP conducted on 14.07.2011 did not yield any information that was not already part of the public domain. Counsel relied on Matru @ Girish Chandra v. State of Uttar Pradesh21 where this court observed that identification tests are not substantive 19 (1991) 4 SCC 536 (para 23) 20 (1999) 8 SCC 428 (para 4-5) 21 (1971) 2 SCC 75 (para 17)

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