NEW DELHI: Delhi High Court has said that the power to grant pardon to an accused for turning approver is discretionary and does not call for a detailed fact analysis.
A single-judge bench of Justice Amit Sharma, in its March 24 judgement, said, “The concerned court, while granting pardon, has to see whether the proposed approver was directly or indirectly concerned with the offence, in order to obtain evidence of such person for the purposes of trial of the offence pending before it. If, in the facts and circumstances of the case, the aforesaid requirements are fulfilled, then the concerned court would proceed and grant pardon to such person. Thus, it is apparent that for exercising such a discretionary power to grant pardon, the court needs to examine the nature of evidence proposed to be put forth by a person seeking the same.”
