Advocates’ ‘Misbehaviour’ With Lady Judge: Allahabad High Court Orders Forensic Examination Of CCTV Footage Of The Incident

The bench of Justice Sangeeta Chandra and Justice Narendra Kumar Johari ordered thus after finding several unexplained suspicious circumstances surrounding the CCTV footage of the incident which took place during certain days of September and October 2022.

“This Court fails to understand that without there being any technical fault reported earlier, footage could be retrieved of only a few hours on each day. There is no report of any technician repairing the cameras. There is considerable doubt in the mind of this court that the CCTV footage have been tampered with/deleted.”

In view of this, the Court has directed the Senior Registrar to send the CCTV footage sent by the A.D.J.-I, Barabanki to the Forensic Science Laboratory, Lucknow with a request to the Director to examine the same, especially with regard to the question of deletion/tampering and submit his report by the next date of listing.

The background of the case

The occasion to pass the above order arose before the HC while dealing with a Reference made to it last year by the court of Sushri Arpita Sahu, Civil Judge (JD), (then posted at) Ramsanehighat at Barabanki under Section 15(2) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971.

In her reference, she had levelled allegations against Advocate Ritesh Mishra, General Secretary, District Bar Association, Barabanki and Mohan Singh, Senior Vice President, District Bar Association, Barabanki of using abusive language against her and thereby lowering the authority of the court and interfering with the due course of judicial proceedings.

While dealing with the above reference, the High Court, vide order dated October 17, 2022, directed the First A.D.J., Barabanki to preserve all the CCTV footage relevant to the court of the Judicial officer including the corridors and other areas leading to it for the period September 06, 2022 till October 08, 2022.

Now, on July 17, when the HC perused the report submitted by A.D.J.-I, Barabanki, the Court found that there were 32 CCTV cameras installed in the court campus of which 14 alone were operating and 18 had become dysfunctional.

The Court further noted that on the 19^th, 20^th, 21^st, 24^th of September and 7^th of October, the cameras were working for a certain time period only, while on the 8^th of October, the entire day's footage was available.

In view of this, the Court came to a prima facie conclusion that the CCTV Footage may have been tampered and hence, the Court directed for the forensic examination of the same. With this, the Court posted the case for further hearing on August 4.

Counsel for Opposite Party: Virendra Kumar Shukla, Divyarth Singh Chauhan, Farooq Ayoob, Himanshu Suryavanshi, Lalta Prasad Misra, Rashmi Pandey

Case title - State of U.P. vs. Ritesh Mishra And 4 Others [CONTEMPT APPLICATION (CRIMINAL) No. - 9 of 2022]

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