The Criminal Procedure Code (Amendment) Bill 2008, (the Bill) was passed by the Parliament in December 2008; received President’s assent on January 7 and was published in the Gazette of India a couple of days later. However, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is yet to notify it.
The amendments are related to the procedure of arrest, right of the arrested person to meet an advocate of his choice, investigation of rape cases and recording of statement in electronic form.
However, the amendments are going well neither with the legal fraternity nor with some women organisations. There had been some nationwide protest against the proposed amendment to Section 41, as the same would reduce the number of bail cases. Women organisations are opposing the amendments on the ground that since most crimes against women are punishable with imprisonment for less than seven years, including offences under the Protection of Domestic Violence Act, so police would not be able to arrest the accused husbands and in-laws.
Witness Bureau gets candid with India’s top criminal lawyer, KTS Tulsi who suggested a slew of amendments to be made in the administration of criminal judicial system but not in procedural law per se.
I do not think that there is anything wrong with the law; it is the implementation of laws that is defective. You can have any law but due to the pressure on judges, the system will clog. If you look at log room of courts, you will be able to understand the plight of the courts and the way they function. They are cluttered with files. Their corridors are filled with wardrobes and many a times, files serve as table and chair for the record keepor. One has to walk over the files many times to reach his chair.
We are running our judicial system in a supersonic age with bullock cart technology. The Indian court rooms at many places are more dilapidated than a third class railway platform. At times, the makeshift chambers are located in the toilet of the court rooms. There seems to be an unholy alliance between the politicians and bureaucrats into ensuring that the courts should not be able to deliver justice, because if courts begin to deliver justice speedily; there is a danger that half of the members of parliament and members of the legislative assembly may get convicted, as dozens of cases are pending against them and they would loose their membership from the elite houses. Therefore, neither the central and state government will allocate adequate funds or provide modern technology to the courts nor will the bureaucrats try to fix the system. If the courts were to be able to decide corruption cases within six months or one year, many bureaucrats will lose their jobs.
If the government is serious about protection of life and liberty of citizens, it should provide the latest technology for scientific investigation in every police station. For well over 30 years, in the entire civilised world, police stations are equipped with technology for electronic recording of all telephonic calls. All police stations in other countries have mobile forensic units, which accompany the police to the scene of crime. Fingerprints and samples are lifted by the members of the mobile forensic units and are analysed there and then. All statements of witnesses are recorded in interrogation rooms equipped with tamper-proof technology.
India may be an Information Technology (IT) super power, capable of transcribing technical data from across the globe overnight but Indian courts take two years on an average to supply documents to the accused. There is perhaps a lack of political and official will, otherwise it is not difficult to provide the same state of the art technology to Indian courts.
In my opinion, unless the courts are provided with technology by which the statement of witnesses can be video recorded and the entire record of the investigation can be e-mailed to court, the courts in India will continue to function at a bullock cart speed. So according to me, it is not important to revisit the law but the technology and facilities for the courts.
I do not think that the proposed amendments to section 41 of Cr PC are justified. Unless provision is made for scientific investigation, we can not confer greater autonomy to police, which is neck deep in corruption. Therefore, it will increase the prospects of corruption at the cost of the common man, so I am opposed to the proposed amendment in section 41.
The amendments that I would suggest to be made to Cr. P.C. are many, some of them are enlisted below:
There should be professional management of case records. There should be qualified management experts deployed for preparing the cause list for all judges. The judges and their staff should be trained in IT. There ought to be a unified registry in subordinate courts and there ought to be convergence of police stations, court rooms and prisons within the same complex. The practice of transporting under trial prisoners from the jail complex to the court rooms can be avoided by adopting the unified criminal court structure, which provides for convergence of all three units. The Government of India can look at the report of Sir Robin Auld in the context of reforms in the criminal justice system in UK.
For me , one of the best amendments introduced to the Cr. P.C. so far are the provisions in sections 372 and 357A Cr. P.C., which provides for compensation to the victim and confer the right on the victim to participate in the proceedings before the courts.
The nationwide protests against increasing the discretion conferred upon the police officers is the reason behind the bill being stalled.
I agree that we need to comprehensively look at the criminal system and should not indulge in piecemeal legislations in order to improve it and steer clear from all its current drawbacks.
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