By Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar / The Wire
New Delhi: In a rare occurrence, the sole witness in a 2020 North-East Delhi communal violence-related murder case was on Thursday produced in a Delhi court room after it had been divided into two halves with a curtain. As a result, neither the defence counsels, who stood in one half of the court room, nor the public prosecutors and the police personnel, who stood in the other half, were able to see the witness.
Another curtain was put around the enclosure where the accused stood.
Advocate Mehmood Pracha, who appeared for two of the six accused in the case under FIR No. 61/2020 of Karawal Nagar police station, told The Wire, “This was the first witness in so many of the Delhi riots cases who has been produced in this fashion and whose statement has been recorded in this fashion.”
“There is no provision in law under which a witness can be produced in this manner from behind the curtains,” he added.
“Some of the defence counsels mentioned in the court that this was an unprecedented thing and so it must be recorded in the proceedings,” he said, adding that an order is likely to be passed in the matter. He further said that nothing was mentioned in the court on why the witness was produced in this manner.
Pracha said the witness, Ajit Tomar, was the sole eyewitness in three murder cases. “One of the cases is 54/2020, the other is 59/2020 and the third is 61/2020. He is also the sole eyewitness in all these three cases. He was produced in the court of additional sessions judge Virender Bhatt in case No. 61/2020 today [February 24, 2020],” he said.
The case under FIR no. 61/2020 pertains to the death of one Dinesh, who was admitted in GTB Hospital with a firearm injury. Following his death, a case of murder was registered on February 27, 2020 at the Karawal Nagar police station. The charge-sheet in the case was filed on June 16, 2020.
`No precedent for use of curtains in this manner’
The senior criminal lawyer said he was not aware of any precedent of such use of curtains in a court either in Delhi or in any other part of the country. “There is a court order in this regard. However, there is a provision in Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for this. But that too has to pass a specific order. But there is absolutely no provision in law, even in UAPA cases, to pass this order. There have been some very rare cases in the past where the witnesses have been hidden but nowhere in the country has an entire court been divided into two halves with a curtain in this manner.”
Pracha said in this case too, nothing like this happened earlier during the proceedings. Also, he said, there was no intimation to any of the defence counsels that anything of this sort – dividing of the court with curtains and hiding the witness – will happen. “There was no application, there was no hearing, there was no order to this effect.”
From a constitutional point of view, he said, “This is something very unprecedented and this goes to the root of free and fair trial because I (as a defence counsel) do not know who was on the other side of the curtain.”
This article first appeared on thewire.in