Trials through video conferencing get a thumbs up

They feel a lot of time of the court is wasted when the convicts are presented in the court every fortnight and marking them present thorough video would economise the time. Jagpal Singh,president,District Bar Association,said,“The biggest advantage is that the court would save a lot of time. The undertrials,who are produced in the court after 14 days,take up a lot of time,which causes delay in other cases.”

He said winding up these cases in a span of two hours would be a lot better than devoting the entire day to them.

Lawyers also felt bringing the undertrials to the court was a security hazard,both for the police and the court.

Citing examples where the accused have tried to escape,Ajay Goyal,an advocate,said,“A lot of effort goes into bringing these undertrials to the court. There is also a possibility that they might try to escape in connivance with their counterparts outside the jail. Video conferencing would make this impossible.”

More than 15 police personnel and three vehicles are pressed into service when the convicts are brought to the court.

While there is much buzz in the court about the new facility,sources claim that the picture quality was not up to the mark and the court did face some problem in identifying the accused in the last two days,during which nearly 25 undertrials marked themselves present in the court of the chief judicial magistrate through video conferencing.

The service would see convicts from the Ambala jail being tried through this.

To identify themselves,the accused were asked to give their name and FIR number and they were marked present. The monitor has been installed in a vacant room in the court. It was around two years ago that the district court had mooted the proposal of video-conferencing.