Madhya Pradesh High Court calls for creating Sandes chat groups for every trial with informant, police, witnesses as members

The Madhya Pradesh High Court recently opined that chat groups using the indigenously developed messaging app, Sandes should be created for every criminal trial, with the complainant, the investigating police, witnesses, etc. as members [Radhe v State]..Justice Anand Pathak opined that such a move could help in communication during the course of the trial and also aid in ensuring a speedy trial and the protection of victims or witnesses in a criminal case.."For speedy trial and victim/witness protection, creation of 'SANDES GROUP' for every heinous offence is imperative and need of the hour ... Witness intimidation can also be looked into by the Police Authorities if any complaint is made in this regard by the complainant over the said Group," the judge said in his October 30 order. .Justice Pathak also opined that the authorities should consider linking the Sandesh App (which is primarily used for inter-departmental government communications) with the Inter-operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) database..Therefore, the Court has asked the Deputy Advocate General to get instructions from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and the State Informatics Centre (SIC) on whether it is possible to synchronize the Sandes app with the ICJS..Justice Pathak passed a similar order in September this year wherein he called for the creation of WhatsApp groups for each criminal case to ensure the presence of witnesses before trial courts..The October 30 order, however, hfavoured using the Sandes app to create such chat groups instead of WhatsApp. This order was passed in a case where a person (applicant) was accused of intimidating a witness in a criminal case.The Court reasoned that if a Sandes group is created in such cases, it could help the witness in promptly communicating any complaints of intimidation to the police. In the October 30 order, the Court added that after Sandes is synchronized with ICJS, it can later be connected to the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTN) and other related systems."Through this mechanism, intimidation/threat to the prosecution witnesses regarding evidence would be minimized at the earliest and witness protection would also be ensured pro-actively," the order stated..The matter will be heard next on November 21. Advocate Mayank Pathak represented the applicant. Deputy Advocate General RS Kushwaha and Public Prosecutor Shiraz Qureshi represented the State..[Read Order]