Use of report of official analyst as prima facie evidence

(1) Any document purporting to be a post-mortem report, under the hand of a registered medical practitioner or the government pathologist, or any document purporting to be a report under the hand of a government expert, upon any matter or thing duly submitted to him for examination or analysis and report, for the purposes of any trial on indictment, or in any preliminary inquiry before a magistrate in respect of any indictable offence, or in any proceeding in a summary jurisdiction court, or before a coroner, shall be receivable at that trial, inquiry or proceeding as prima facie evidence of any matter or thing therein contained relating to the examination or analysis, Provided that where the report of any of the aforesaid experts is produced in any trial, such expert shall if within the country be called if the defence so requires. 24 (2) If, on any inquiry or proceeding mentioned in sub-section (1), of this section any one of those experts is called as a witness to give evidence on the subject-matter of his report, the party calling him shall, unless the magistrate, or the summary jurisdiction court, or the coroner, otherwise expressly orders, pay all costs occasioned by his having been so called. (3) The provisions of this section shall, with the necessary modifications, apply in the case of a document purporting to be a report by a registered medical practitioner on any injuries received by a person which are the subject of a prosecution in any trial on indictment, in any preliminary inquiry or in any proceeding in a summary jurisdiction court, Provided that the report purports to have been written on the same day as, or on the day following, that on which the examination was made by the medical practitioner. (4) The experts mentioned in sub-section (1) may be persons either in the service of the Government of this country or that of any government within the British Commonwealth of Nations. (5) For the purpose of sub-section (1), a government expert includes the following public officers– (a) Pathologist; (b) Analytical Chemist; (c) Bacteriologist; (d) Armourer; (e) Forensic Document Examiner; (f) Forensic Analyst; (g) Scientific Examiner (Motor Vehicles); 25 (h) Finger Print Technician; (i) Technician (Scenes of Crime Investigation); (j) Firearm and Tool Mark Examiner; or (k) the holder of any other public office declared by the Minister by Order published in the Gazette to be a public officer to which this section applies.