Court to get copies of missing papers next week

The reconstructed documents in the Abhimanyu murder case will be provided to the Ernakulam District and Sessions Court and the defence side next week.

The prosecution has reconstructed copies of the 13 missing documents in the case, including the postmortem certificate and chargesheet. The copies generated from the documents in possession of the prosecution will be provided to the court as well as the defence side on March 18, the day on which the court has posted the case. Lawyers will get an opportunity to compare the reconstructed documents with the copies earlier supplied to them, said prosecution authorities.

The High Court recently ordered reconstruction of the documents after the district court reported that the papers had been lost irretrievably. The Hindu had reported that the docu

HC has ordered that reconstructed papers in Abhimanyu murder case be given to district court

ments related to three cases, including the Abhimanyu murder case, had been lost from the court.

The missing documents had created an uproar with leaders of political parties, including the CPI(M), BJP, and the Congress, and relatives of the slain student leader seeking an inquiry. There were also allegations that the papers were destroyed to derail the trial in the case, in which activists of the nowproscribed Popular Front of India and the Campus Front of India had been arraigned as accused. Abhimanyu, an SFI leader at Maharaja’s College, was murdered on July 2, 2018.

Prosecution sources allayed concerns that the disappearance of the documents would hit the trial. The reconstructed papers were as good as the original. The photocopies, which are the reconstructed copies, were legally admissible documents. The law permitted reconstruction of the case documents that had been lost irretrievably, they said.

Meanwhile, the Young Lawyers Committee of the All India Lawyers Union, Ernakulam Committee, approached the Registrar (District Judiciary) of the High Court seeking action against those responsible for the disappearance of the documents.