Delhi courtroom grants partial reduction to northeast riot lawyer | Delhi Information – Instances of India

NEW DELHI: A city court appointed the youngest counsel present in the courtroom as the local commissioner in the matter pertaining to the seizure of data by Delhi Police from the device of advocate Mehmood Pracha in connection with the allegation of his having tutored a witness in a northeast Delhi riot case.
Advocate Avneet Kaur was awaiting her turn in another case on Saturday while the proceedings regarding Pracha’s petition were under way. Upon additional sessions judge Dharmender Rana’s asking who the youngest lawyer in the courtroom was, Kaur stepped forward. She was then appointed the local commissioner in the case and directed to coordinate with the investigating officer and to visit Pracha’s office at noon on Saturday. A local commissioner is an officer of the court who makes local investigations in a case.
According to the court, the police would seize and seal the device in question under the local commissioner’s supervision, but it would remain in Pracha’s custody till further orders. Pracha was directed not to tamper with the computer in question. “The entire procedure shall be videographed at the expenses borne by the state,” the court ordered, adding that the local commissioner’s fee was to be paid by Pracha.
The court also stayed the chief metropolitan magistrate’s order of Friday which had rejected Pracha’s plea for modification of an earlier order allowing a search to be carried out by Delhi Police. The prosecution represented by special public prosecutor Amit Prasad and additional public prosecutor Irfan Ahmed and Pracha and his lawyers, including Rudro Chatterjee, had jointly proposed that the “purity and sanctity of the data in question” had to be ensured and a local commissioner should be appointed.
Pracha had challenged Friday’s order, which stated that the hands of the investigators couldn’t be tied to prevent them from collecting evidence. He submitted that he was willing to provide the identified computers before the court and the investigating officer could obtain whatever information he wished to and whatever was permitted by the court in the court’s presence. This, his plea pointed out, would curtail “any mischief, and at the same time, ensure that the object of the search warrant is also satisfied”.
The chief metropolitan magistrate, however, had ordered the execution of the search warrant in accordance with law. The magistrate observed that Pracha’s offer of the target data in a pen drive could only be considered by the investigation officer if it was admissible in court.