Chief secy assault: Delhi court asks police to prove tampering with CCTV footage

New Delhi: The court, on Monday, asked the Delhi police to prove that tampering was done with the CCTV footage recovered by them from the official residence of Chief Minister Arvin Kejriwal in the Chief Secretary assualt case. 

The police had earlier said that the timestamp on the clip did not match with the sequence of the events.  

"The defence counsel stated that police must prove that tampering has been done," Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP)-North, Harendra K Singh said, adding, “It was informed to court that site visit reveals discrepancies in the timing. Only FSL will be able to tell if any tampering has been done."

The police said the footage was sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory for further examination, news agency ANI reported.

The court has reserved its order till Tuesday.

Additional DCP Harendra Singh told the court that the meeting between the Delhi Chief Secretary and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs was not held in the camp office but in the living room of the CM residence. 

Meanwhile, the Delhi government is mulling live streaming of all official meetings following the alleged assault on Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash at the Chief Minister's residence on February 19, news agency PTI reported.

A senior government official said that as per a plan, live feed of meetings with audio output will be available on a website. If the plan is passed, funds will be allocated for it in the upcoming budget, he said. 

"Through live streaming of official meetings, people will be able to know who spoke what in the meeting, be it the elected representative or officials," the official told PTI. 

There is also a plan to put all file movement and notings online, he said. 

"Plan is also to put all file movement and file notings online for people to see who was working on a file for how long, who cleared it and who wrote what on a particular file, be it the elected government or officers," the official said. 

The AAP government has alleged that some officers have created hurdles in the national capital’s administration work.

Delhi Police had on Friday visited Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence and seized a hard disk of the CCTV camera system installed to probe the case of alleged assault of the Chief Secretary by AAP MLAs. Police had claimed that it had to go to the Chief Minister's house to collect the CCTV footage after its request for the same was not met.

Also Read: Delhi chief secy ‘assault’: Police seize hard disk of CCTV from Kejriwal’s home

"We had asked for the CCTV camera footage and hard disk on February 20 itself but there was no response. So, we decided to come down and examine it," the Additional DCP had said. He had also said that the in-charge of maintenance at the Chief Minister's residence had been intimated about the police visit.

A total of 21 CCTV cameras and a hard disk were examined by the police. Fourteen CCTV cameras were running while seven were not working at the time of the incident. 

The police had said that there was no CCTV camera in the room where the alleged incident took place and no footage was obtained. "We believe the incident occurred between midnight of February 19 and 12:15 am on February 20," the police had said.

Also Read: No CCTVs where Delhi chief secy was assaulted: Cops on CM home search

(With inputs from agencies.)