Written by: Express News Service
2 min readNew DelhiJul 9, 2013 01:45 AM IST
First published on: Jul 9, 2013 at 01:45 AM IST
The Delhi High Court on Monday gave the Delhi government four more weeks to formulate a witness protection policy in accordance with a High Court direction passed on May 22,while giving its judgement against a witnesses in the Jessica Lall Murder case.
The division bench of Acting Chief Justice B D Ahmed and Justice Vibhu Bakhru asked the Delhi government to expedite the process after its standing counsel Pawan Sharma submitted that “further time was needed to come out with the policy”.
In its order in May,the High Court had asked the government to evolve a policy within 10 weeks to ensure that witnesses were not harassed or intimidated by powerful accused in criminal cases,after noting that most witnesses had turned hostile and refused to identify the prime accused in the Jessica Lall case. In its 103-page verdict,the bench had also ordered for the prosecution of actor Shayan Munshi and a ballistic expert for turning hostile in the case.
The bench had referred the case to the Chief Justice to convert the matter into a PIL and set up a special bench to monitor the witness protection programme of the city government.
The court had observed that it was “the duty of the government to provide adequate protection” to witnesses.
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