Judges not immune to media pressure, media narratives can digress course of case: Justice Anup Bhambhani

Judges and investigating agencies are not immune to media pressure and what they read does affect their thinking, Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani of Delhi High Court said..He said that the pressure of media narrative and media trial can digresses the course of a case.“We must always remind ourselves and be conscious that as judges, as counsel and as people otherwise engaged in a criminal justice system, we are all influenced, even if subliminally, with what we read and that influences our thinking,” Justice Bhambhani stressed..He was speaking on the topic ‘Fair Trial: Fairytale, Narrative or More’ at the first discourse organised by the Centre for Discourses on Criminal and Constitutional Jurisprudence..Justice Bhambhani explained the problems that hinder a fair trial in the country and spoke on the media pressure, the role of investigating agencies and legal aid.He flagged the issue of investigating agencies seizing electronic documents, servers and computer systems and selectively presenting them as evidence. There has to be something that needs to be done with regards to this, he stressed.“In a lot of investigations happening now in financial crimes, the Investigating Officers raid offices, pick up electronic records wholesale, and walk away with servers, computer systems. They neither leave copies nor make clones and out of the 10,000 emails, they will produce five before the court and say 'look this man is guilty',” Justice Anup Bhambhani. Speaking on the issue of right to silence, Justice Bhambhani said that a line needs to be drawn between cooperation in the investigation and confession..Justice Siddharth Mridul also spoke at the event on the topic 'Presumption of Innocence'. He said that in a thriving democracy, protection of individual liberty is a fundamental duty and it is now part of the basic structure of the Constitution.“Personal liberty is paramount and sine qua non for human dignity and human happiness… Personal liberty is how you define civilisation because without personal liberty, you have nothing... Personal liberty has now become a deeply enshrined part of our constitutional safeguards and, in fact, it is today a part of the basic structure of the Constitution.”Justice Mridul highlighted the importance of the principle of presumption of innocence and said that it is a fundamental right.“[Presumption of innocence] is in a way the elixir of the criminal justice system. It is evidently today a recognised legal right. I would go to the extent of saying that it is a fundamental right.”.He also explained the difference between the ‘crime control model’ where special laws (like Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act or Prevention of Terrorism Act) are used and the ‘due process model’.The judge said that under the crime control model, the focus is on securing punishment for the guilty and it endorses the possibility of mistakenly convicting innocent persons on a few occasions as the protection for the accused is lowered.“In contrast the due process model places more emphasis on strengthening protection for the accused even if that means let a hundred men go scot-free. Despite these differences, however, both models follow the common aim of punishing the guilty and sparing the innocent. Neither model aims to punish the innocent and neither aims to spare the guilty,” he said. .Senior Advocates Dr Arun Mohan and N Hariharan also spoke at the event.