Mumbai: The Bombay high court has allowed a rape accused to access photographs and video, which will be used as evidence against him. However, the high court refused to give a copy of photographs and video to him, fearing that they could be misused.
A single bench of Justice Prakash Naik was hearing a criminal application filed by Yasin Shaikh (name change), a rape accused challenging November 12, 2016, order passed by Dindoshi session’s judge who refused to give him access to photographs and video related to the rape case.
According to the prosecution, Shaikh was booked under the charges of rape, outraging the modesty of woman and cheating. During the investigation, the police has seized laptop, pen drive, and mobile from him. The articles were sent to forensic science laboratory for the purpose of collecting the evidence. The laboratory people found 76 case related images and video from hard disk and compact disk of the laptop.
The lawyer of the accused, Rishi Bhuta told the court that the as per Criminal Procedure Code (Cr.P.C.) the accused has a right to defend himself and therefore he should be provided all the necessary copies related to the case.
Additional Public prosecutor N.B. Patil argued that accused lawyer had already inspected photographs and videos and said that they should not be given to him.
The court observed that images and videos contain some objectionable photographs of the victim. The court added that however, in the backdrop of rights of the accused and interest of victim both aspects will have to be considered concurrently.
The court said that prosecution is going to rely on those images and video in the trial and they can be shown to the accused in the presence of his advocate and Dindoshi court superintendent. However, the court also asserted that copies should not be given to the accused and his lawyer.
