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Sujoy Mitra v. State of West Bengal

Criminal Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Criminal Appeal No. 1620 of 2015)Decided 2 Dec 2015
Criminal Appeal No. 1620 of 2015
Justice J.S. Khehar · Justice R. Banumathi

Background

The appellant was an accused in a sexual-offence trial pending in a West Bengal trial court. The complainant, a citizen of Ireland living in Dublin, was to give her evidence by video conference from the Indian Embassy in Dublin. The accused challenged the procedure the trial court had adopted, and the Calcutta High Court allowed the challenge only in part by adding some safeguards.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court did not accept the accused's demand that he be given a copy of the video recording of the witness's testimony. Instead it laid down a step-by-step procedure: the trial court sets up the video link with the help of the National Informatics Centre; an embassy officer stays present throughout and confirms that no one else is in the room; the transcript is emailed to the embassy, where the witness signs it before an officer; the signed copy is sent back and re-endorsed by the trial judge, and that endorsed statement becomes the witness's testimony. The Court reasoned that the accused gets the same rights he would have had if the trial court had recorded the statement itself, and that a video copy for every such case would be cumbersome. The appeal was disposed of, and the witness's testimony is to be recorded afresh under this procedure.

Lesson Learnt

A witness who is abroad can give evidence by video link, provided courts put firm safeguards in place to confirm who is present, what is said, and that the record is authentic. An accused's right to a fair trial is protected through this supervised process, not by an automatic right to a copy of every video.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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