Steps outlined to check shortcomings
NEWDELHI: Three Supreme Court appointed Amici Curiae (friends of court) placed before the top court on Thursday, “Draft Rules of Criminal Practice, 2020”, outlining measures aimed to address shortcomings in the trial of criminal cases and to bring about uniformity across the country in criminal probes and trials.
The measures suggested in the draft rules include steps to ensure independence of public prosecutors by appointing separate legal advisors to advise the investigators during the probe, and standard practices for recording evidence and writing judgments.
The three Amici Curiae, senior counsels R Basant and Siddharth Luthra and advocate K Parameshwar were appointed by the top court in November 2017 and February 2018 to assist the court after it noticed certain inadequacies in the procedure followed during the criminal trials across the country while hearing a criminal case. The court registered a suo motu case and took up the matter with a view to issuing guidelines regarding such deficiencies in criminal trials.
The bench, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) SA Bobde on Thursday directed that the copy of the draft rules be supplied to all states and union territories.
Every post-mortem report and medico legal certificate should contain a printed format/ sketch of the human body indicating injuries. The sketch should contain both the front and rear view of the human body.
In case of death of a person in police action or while in police custody, the investigating officer should inform the doctor-in-charge to arrange for photographs or videography for conducting post-mortem examination of the deceased person.
Such photographs and videographs should be made part of evidence by seizure under a panchnama, a document which records evidence and findings that an officer makes at the scene of an offence/crime.
The investigating officer should take necessary steps to preserve the original copies of such photographs and videographs. The videos and photographs should also be stored on a separate memory card.
A site plan of the place of occurrence of an incident should be prepared by the investigating officer by hand and the same should be appended to the panchnama.
The deposition of witnesses should be in typed format and should be prepared on computers, if available.
If the deposition of the witness is in a language other than English, the deposition should be recorded both in the language of the witness and in English. When the deposition is not in English, the translation into English can be done either by the presiding officer of the court or through a translator.
After charges are framed, accused should be referred to only by their rank in the array of the accused and not by their names except during the stage of identification of the accused by witnesses.
The witnesses, exhibits and other material objects which form part of the evidence should also be referred to by their numbers and not by names.
Every judgment should contain a preface showing the names of the parties and an appendix giving the list of prosecution witnesses, defence witnesses and other evidence.
It should also set out the points for determination, the decision on the points and the reasons for arriving at the decision.
In the judgment, the accused, witnesses and material objects should be referred to by their numbers and not names.
In case of conviction, the judgment should separately indicate the offence involved and the sentence awarded. In case of acquittal, a direction should be given to release the accused if he/ she is in jail.
In order to ensure speedy trial in criminal cases, once the examination of witnesses has commenced, the trial should be held on a day-to-day basis. If witnesses are in attendance, no adjournment or postponement should be granted except for special reasons which should be recorded.
In order to ensure that public prosecutors function independent of the investigators, the state government should appoint advocates other than prosecutors to advice investigating officers during the probe of a criminal case.