HC JUDGE WARNS AGAINST TAKING UP CASE CITING OVERCROWDING

Irked with overcrowding in the courtroom, a senior judge of Bombay high court on Monday warned of not taking up any case for hearing if social distancing norms were not followed.

A division bench headed by Justice S S Shinde, which hears criminal cases, after seeing the crowd in his courtroom, asked staff to tell police officers, advocates and litigants to wait outside. “Don’t crowd in court .... or else we will discharge the entire board and not hear any case,” Justice Shinde said.

He said overcrowding and not maintaining social distancing norms were in breach of the standard operating procedure laid down by HC at the time of resumption of physical hearing amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Standard operating procedure and social distancing is for everyone’s health and safety. We (judges) are sitting at a distance,” Justice Shinde said.

He referred to the incident of 60 advocates testing positive for COVID-19 at Amravati district in Maharashtra.

“Fortunately, we have not had any untoward incident here. We are going in the right direction and we don’t want to go back to hearing cases virtually,” Justice Shinde said. He asked everyone, including lawyers, to wear masks at all times.

Justice Gautam Patel of HC had last month issued a notice complaining of overcrowding in court and had directed everyone to strictly adhere to safety norms. Last week, Justice Prithviraj Chavan had refused to hear a case as the lawyer appearing in the matter had removed his mask.

Amid a surge in cases, the HC suspended physical hearings in April last year and conducted hearings for urgent matters through video conferencing.