Consider application to treat 23 forest officers as ‘accused’ instead of ‘witnesses’ in illegal mining case, Karnataka HC directs special court  

High Court directs special court to treat forest officers as accused, not witnesses, in illegal mining case.

The High Court of Karnataka has directed the special court to pass a fresh order, on an application filed by a retired deputy conservator of forests who is an accused in the illegal mining case involving former Minister G. Janardhana Reddy, for treating 23 other forest officers as “accused” instead of examining them as “prosecution witnesses”.

“A person cannot be in a position of prosecution witness if he is particeps criminis [one who takes part in a crime], except in accordance with law,” the court said.

Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order on a petition filed by S. Muthaiah, 68, accused number 4 in the case. The petitioner had questioned the special court’s January 6, 2025, order of rejecting his plea to treat 23 officials of the Forest Department as “accused” by invoking Section 319 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Cr.PC).

The petitioner had contended that 23 officers, who had admitted their guilt, could not have been treated as “witnesses” both by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the special court.

Meanwhile, the High Court noted that the 23 officers had given their statements to the CBI under Section 161 of the Cr.PC and later recorded their voluntary statement under Section 164 of the Cr.PC before a magistrate admitting that they had signed blank forest permits and handed them over to accused persons and those permits were utilised by the accused persons to illegally transport iron ore.

In the permits, signed by each one of the 23 officers who have been cited as “prosecution witnesses”, the column for mentioning the kind of timber or description of forest produce was left blank besides the space to write the name of the person in whose favour the permit was issued, the High Court noted. One of the charges against the petitioner is also on issuing similar blank permits in favour of other accused.

Observing that the special court has misdirected itself, the High Court said that in the present case, the 23 officers are “witnesses”, who are participants in the crime as they have admitted the guilt to some extent that they had singled blank permits.