in the course of the proceedings can usefully retract, in view of the rule we have laid down that the witness can retract until the discussion is closed. Some writers hold that in view of this rule the order of the Judge or Magistrate cannot deprive the witness of the benefit which the law itself allows him, and that therefore, if notwithstanding that the order has been made and proceedings may have been initiated against the witness for false testimony such witness retracts before the hearing of the cause in which the false testimony is closed, he is exempt from punishment. If, however, the proceedings in that cause had to be suspended on account of such suspicion of false testimony (vide sub-section 2 of Section 600, Code of Civil Procedure), the order of the Court for proceedings to be instituted against the witness makes the continuation or resumption of the hearing of that cause impossible until the proceedings on the false testimony are terminated; in such case the decree of suspension is considered as closing the hearing of the cause in regard to the witness and he cannot, therefore, any longer usefully retract148. Punishment
The crime of false testimony is not of the same gravity when it is committed in a civil cause as when it is committed in a criminal cause. In both cases, it is true, there is an offence against the administration of justice; but the effects both in regard to society at large as well as in regard to the individual are not injurious in the same degree. In civil causes the interests involved are ordinarily merely pecuniary, and even where the false testimony has occasioned a wrongful judgement, the prejudice suffered by the party aggrieved is, if not always at least often, remediable. But in criminal causes the interests involved are much more sacred and more directly affect the maintenance of good order consisting in the repression of offences; and the false testimony is calculated to provoke a more grievous injury which is almost always not redressable, both when it favours the impunity of a guilty person as when it damages an innocent person. Hence the difference which the law makes in the punishment. The punishment for false testimony in a civil cause is hard labour from seven months to two years (Section 103).
148
Maino, op. cit., art. 245, para. 1124
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