Delhi Court Requests Prosecution, Lawyers To Prioritize Riots Cases To Avoid Delay In Hearings

A Delhi Court on Monday requested Special Public Prosecutors and lawyers to prioritize hearing of cases relating to the North East Delhi riots, in order to avoid delay in hearings.

The oral remarks came from Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat while the Court was set to hear Sharjeel Imam's bail plea in a riots case.

"In FIR 59/2020, I had passed suggestions to counsels also that let the bail pleas be taken up one by one on a regular basis but nobody agrees. Everybody is in a hurry. Everyone is anxious that his application be listed first. It becomes difficult sometimes," the judge said.

The Court said that it has requested Public Prosecutors and counsels to prioritise the cases so that there is no delay in the hearings.

During the course of hearing, while Advocate Tanveer Ahmed Mir was waiting for his case to be taken up for arguments, Special Public Prosecutor Amit Prasad was occupied in making arguments in another riots case thereby delaying the hearing.

Advocate Mir appearing for Sharjeel Imam highlighted the issue of pendency of bail pleas while suggesting that even though the pace may be slow, the direction as to how the Court adjudicates a matter must be correct.

"We are bothered, as counsel at bar and as officer of the Court. We aren't bothered about the outcomes of cases. Having 25 years of serious crime practice, I'm bothered about issues raised before this Court and most importantly, what are the signals we're sending to the society," Mir submitted.

"We are anyway in violation of Supreme Court's order which states that a bail application has to be concluded within a time frame. It states that the bail application can be adjourned beyond seven days only exceptionally. It's a bit unfortunate since we're so burdened and we end up even holding bail applications for 3 to 4 months. We have our limitations. In Allahabad High Court, bail applications remain pending for 9 months," he added.

It was therefore submitted that while there are legal challenges for both the bar and the bench, however, such challenges must be dealt with in the right manner.

"We will have to meet all the challenges which are to be struggled for. Yes, the pace may be slow but the direction must be proper. What matters is whether we are going in the right direction or not," Mir said.

"We have so many Prosecutions where the Prosecution is legitimate or not. But the point is, when a chargesheet comes before the Court of law, it has to be dealt with. We run from challenges. I think the soul of lawyers will die if the challenges are gone or if we run from them," Mir added.

To this, the judge remarked thus:

"I was reading a book yesterday and it said that experience is not about challenges coming before you but how you respond to the challenges."

Last week, the judge had expressed concern over the delay in trial in the Delhi Riots larger conspiracy case involving charges Under UAPA and IPC. He had asked the Prosecution to file reply only with regards to the documents which cannot be given in the applications moved under Section 207 (supply to the accused the copy of police report and other document) CrPC by accused persons.

The Court said that if all the accused persons are filing applications under sec. 207 CrPC on different dates and the Prosecution chooses to file replies in all of them, it will delay the course of trial as the arguments have to be heard separately in such applications.

"This will take years, it will become very difficult," said the Judge.