Petition in Delhi HC challenges notification allowing police to present evidence virtually in courts

A petition has been filed before the Delhi High Court against a Delhi government notification allowing police to present evidence in courts virtually from police stations.

Advocates across the Delhi district courts have been abstaining from work since Friday, seeking its withdrawal.

The petition, which is likely to come up for hearing on Wednesday, challenged the legality, validity, and constitutional propriety of the notification by the Home (General) Department of the Delhi government, with the approval of the Lieutenant Governor.

According to the notification, all police stations in Delhi have been declared as ''designated places'' for deposition of police officers/personnel through video conferencing, the petition, filed by advocate Kapil Madan, claimed.

It claimed that the notification ''strikes at the very root of the right to fair trial under Article 21 of the Constitution, by authorising prosecution witnesses, i.e., police officials, to depose from within their own official precincts''.

''Such an arrangement undermines the solemnity of judicial proceedings, facilitates tutoring or selective reference to departmental records, and irreversibly tilts the adversarial balance in favour of the prosecution,'' it claimed.

Furthermore, it also violates the fundamental principle nemo judex in causa sua (no one can be a judge in his own cause), since witnesses would testify from within their own sphere of authority, thereby creating a perception of bias, it claimed.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)