Synopsis: The Court heard an application made by Bharadwaj requesting the full statements of the witnesses. Bharadwaj argued that due to parts of the same being truncated/redacted, copies of witness statements given to her previously made no sense.
The Mumbai Special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court ordered the NIA to provide copies of the unredacted statements made by the witnesses to the accused Bhima Koregaon, Sudha Bharadwaj.
The Court stated that, except for the identity and addresses of the witnesses, the statements should be made without truncation, which can be redacted.
The Court heard an application by Bharadwaj requesting the full statements of the witnesses. Bharadwaj argued that due to parts of the same being truncated/redacted, copies of witness statements given to her previously made no sense.
The application filed by advocates Ragini Ahuja and Chandni Chawla had raised grievances that her constitutional right to a fair trial was defeated by presenting truncated statements.
While allowing the plea, the Additional Sessions Judge, DE Kothalikar, also orally asked the NIA to take due care in the future to provide copies of witness statements.
In the case of Bhima Koregaon, the Special Court also ruled on an application filed by Father Stan Swamy and another accused seeking clone copies of the electronic data obtained from them.
The Court asked NIA to explain if providing a ‘copy’ could be considered the same as providing a ‘clone copy’ of the data after NIA submitted that they had already provided copies of the data taken to the accused.
Eventually, the Court disposed of the application giving the lawyers of the accused liberty to go to the NIA office to get a ‘clone copy’ of the data taken from their clients.
Along with Gautam Navlakha and Hany Babu, co-accused in the case of Bhima Koregaon, Bharadwaj also filed separate applications seeking access to five books a month from outside the prison of Taloja and newspapers sold within the prison gates.
They alleged that the jail authorities in Taloja rejected parcels of books sent to them by their friends and lawyers because there were not sufficient books and texts in the jail library.
The accused argued that because they were academicians who spent their lives reading and studying books, they should not be arbitrarily denied access to books.
Before taking a decision on the application, the Court ordered the defence lawyer to submit an affidavit stating that the jail authorities had failed to allow access to the books relating to the formal application submitted by the accused.