The Allahabad High Court held that no adverse inference can be drawn against an accused under Section 313 CrPC for failing to explain a circumstance that was never put to him during examination. The court reaffirmed that the examination under Section 313 is a statutory right and a fair-trial guarantee — prosecution cannot use a gap in the accused's answers against him when the prosecution itself failed to put the incriminating circumstance to the accused in the first place.

Section 313 CrPC (Section 351 BNSS) mandates that before convicting an accused, the court must examine him personally, putting every incriminating circumstance appearing in the prosecution evidence to him so he may explain it. This is not a mere procedural formality — it is a constitutional fair-trial requirement rooted in Article 21.

The principle the Allahabad High Court restates is clean: adverse inference from silence is only permissible where the accused was actually questioned about the circumstance and chose not to explain. If the prosecution omits to put a circumstance to the accused, the accused's silence on it cannot be treated as an admission or used to build guilt.

This matters because courts sometimes convict by stringing together circumstances, some of which were never put under Section 313. The ruling draws a bright line: the burden to ensure complete examination rests on the court and prosecution, not the accused.

The satellite law to know: under Section 313(3) CrPC, the accused's answers can be used in the trial but cannot be the sole basis for conviction. The accused has a right not to answer — silence itself is not an admission. Contrast this with Section 106 Evidence Act (burden on accused to explain facts especially within his knowledge), which operates independently but cannot override the Section 313 safeguard.

Key precedent: Reena Hazarika v. State of Assam (2018) SC held that omission to put material circumstances under Section 313 vitiates the trial if it causes prejudice to the accused.