Write a note on questions intended to insult or annoy.

Question: Write a note on questions intended to insult or annoy.

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Answer

Section 152 deals with the provision regarding Insulting or Annoying Questions during the examination of witnesses. Section 152 enables ‘the court to forbid questions which are asked only to insult or annoy the witness’. Even if the question is on a proper point, the court may forbid it if it is needlessly offensive.

Sections 151 and 152 invest a court with power or discretion to forbid questions. The trial Judge is not mere automation but is supposed intelligently to control the conduct of the cases in the Court and it is one of his important functions to see that scandalous matters are not introduced in the record unless they are relevant for the proper decision of the case.

The Court cannot forbid indecent or scandalous questions if they relate to the fact in issue. If they have, however, merely some bearing on the questions before the Court, the Court, has discretion and may forbid them.

Where a question is intended to insult or annoy or through the paper in itself, appears to the Court needlessly offensive in form, the Court must interpose for the protection of the witness.

The object of Section 150, 151, and 152

As per the published Proceedings of the Supreme Legislative Council, Gazette of India, pp 237, 238, dated March 30, 1872.:

“In order to protect witnesses against needless questions of this kind, we enact that any advocate who asks such questions without written instructions (which the court may call upon him to produce, and may impound when produced) shall be guilty of contempt of court and that the court may record any such question if asked by a party to the proceedings.

The records of the question in the written instructions are to be admissible as evidence of the publication of an imputation intended to harm the reputation of the person affected, and such imputations are not to be regarded as privileged communications, or as falling under any of the exceptions to section 499 of the Indian Penal Code, merely because they were made in the manner stated.

Upon a trial for defamation, it would, of course, be open to the person accused to show, either that the imputation was true, and that it was for the public good that the imputation should be made (Exception 1, section 499, Indian Penal Code), or that it was made in good faith for the protection of the interest of the person making it or of any other person (Exception 9). This is the only method which occurs to us of providing at once for the interests of a bona fide questioner and an innocent witness.”

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