Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Tuesday reprimanded the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for failing to file a reply on using photocopies of certain statements in 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case as secondary evidence.
The court said that prima facie the trial court order does not seem to be correct allowing NIA to use secondary evidence and asked the NIA to clear its stand what it would do for the missing statements.
The division bench of Justice A.S. Oka and Justice A.S. Gadkari observed that the probe agency was adopting ‘delaying tactics’ on a bunch of appeals filed by the accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case. The bench also warned the agency that the court would be forced to stay the trial been held at the NIA court in the case, if the agency didn’t change its conduct.
The court was hearing an appeal filed by accused Sameer Kulkarni, challenging an order of the NIA court allowing the agency to use photocopies of certain statements and confessional statements as secondary evidence during the trial. The NIA had sought permission to use photocopies as secondary evidence on the ground that the original copies had gone missing. Mr Kulkarni has contended that the trial court should not have allowed use of photocopies.
In last hearing, the bench had observed that the special court should not have allowed the use of photocopies since there was no evidence to prove that the photocopied documents were authentic copies of the original or certified statements.
