The Delhi High Court recently suggested digital recording of statements of witnesses and disclosure statements by use of body-held or wearable cameras..The Court is of the opinion that digital recording of statements and proceedings would not only be in “the larger public interest”, but would also “preserve and advance the rule of law”..“There is no gainsaying that the digital recording of the proceedings by the police would lend immense credibility to their performance, and instil the desired confidence in the Court as well as litigating public which, often, is missing“, the Court observed..The Court further noted that storage in the form of CDs, pen drives, cloud etc was “far less space consuming” than the space required to manually preserve the recorded proceedings and statements..Acknowledging that any such move would entail huge expenditure for the State as it would require setting up a whole new system with the requisite hardware, software, training etc, the Court issued notice to the Central government, the Delhi government and the Commissioner of Police..The suggestion was made by a Division Bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and IS Mehta while perusing an “action-taken report” filed by Delhi Police in a criminal appeal before the Bench..The report revealed that between July 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018, a total of 2,38,070 cases were registered, which would require the examination of approximately 10,00,000 witnesses during investigation..The report stated that given the rate at which technology becomes obsolete due to its “dynamic nature”, it might be impossible to retrieve the data from the storage devices at the relevant point of time..It, therefore, suggested establishing an information retrieval mechanism with huge capacity by using “cloud computing technology”..The issues flagged by the Delhi Police with respect to data security, hacking, ownership of clouds, access rights and other new form of digital red tapism, the Bench said, were not insurmountable as it could be taken care of by experts in the field..The Court, however, clarified that it was not suggesting an abrogation of the current practice with respect to recording of proceedings..“We are not suggesting that digital recording of the proceedings conducted by the police, inter alia, under Section 161 Cr.P.C. should completely take over the existing mechanisms/ procedures.”, it said..The matter will next be heard on September 10..Read order:
The Delhi High Court recently suggested digital recording of statements of witnesses and disclosure statements by use of body-held or wearable cameras..The Court is of the opinion that digital recording of statements and proceedings would not only be in “the larger public interest”, but would also “preserve and advance the rule of law”..“There is no gainsaying that the digital recording of the proceedings by the police would lend immense credibility to their performance, and instil the desired confidence in the Court as well as litigating public which, often, is missing“, the Court observed..The Court further noted that storage in the form of CDs, pen drives, cloud etc was “far less space consuming” than the space required to manually preserve the recorded proceedings and statements..Acknowledging that any such move would entail huge expenditure for the State as it would require setting up a whole new system with the requisite hardware, software, training etc, the Court issued notice to the Central government, the Delhi government and the Commissioner of Police..The suggestion was made by a Division Bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and IS Mehta while perusing an “action-taken report” filed by Delhi Police in a criminal appeal before the Bench..The report revealed that between July 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018, a total of 2,38,070 cases were registered, which would require the examination of approximately 10,00,000 witnesses during investigation..The report stated that given the rate at which technology becomes obsolete due to its “dynamic nature”, it might be impossible to retrieve the data from the storage devices at the relevant point of time..It, therefore, suggested establishing an information retrieval mechanism with huge capacity by using “cloud computing technology”..The issues flagged by the Delhi Police with respect to data security, hacking, ownership of clouds, access rights and other new form of digital red tapism, the Bench said, were not insurmountable as it could be taken care of by experts in the field..The Court, however, clarified that it was not suggesting an abrogation of the current practice with respect to recording of proceedings..“We are not suggesting that digital recording of the proceedings conducted by the police, inter alia, under Section 161 Cr.P.C. should completely take over the existing mechanisms/ procedures.”, it said..The matter will next be heard on September 10..Read order:
