Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

Prison officials rapped for delay

By Our Staff Reporter

Coimbatore Jan. 20. The special court for bomb blast cases judge, R. Sivakumar, today rapped the Prison department for delay in producing the accused before the court despite his directions and threatened to initiate contempt proceedings against officials concerned besides ordering recovery of the trial cost.

A visibly irritated judge pulled up the Additional Superintendents of Prison, Y. George Theodore Selvyn, and P. Govindarajan, present in the court, and sought to know from the Assistant Commissioner of Police (City Armed Reserve), Velliangiri, when the police escort was made available on the prison premises. Mr. Velliangiri replied that the escort was ready by 9.30 am itself.

After the undertrials expressed difficulty in coming to the court everyday, the judge issued directions for producing one third of the 166 accused by 10.30 am.

But the first batch of undertrials was produced only at 11.30 am and the third and last batch at 12.30 pm.

The judge pointed out that the State spent nearly Rs. 55,000 everyday as fee for prosecution counsel and State brief counsel, besides incurring routine expenditure.

The Department wasted crucial business hours of the court and drained the State resources. The court would have to pass orders for recovering the trial cost for the number of hours lost from officials' salaries, he said.

Handling prisoners was the Department's headache, he said, and added that the officials should not cite non-cooperation of undertrials as a reason for the delay.

The authorities should immediately bring to the knowledge of the court the reluctance on the part of the undertrials to come to the court and should not keep it waiting. If the prisoners were purposely delaying their exit from the prison to meet their relatives, it should not be at the cost of the trial, he said.

The ADSPs submitted that the delay was mainly due to non-cooperation by the accused in getting ready on time. The accused took time to finalise who should go to the court that day.

If the issue of selecting prisoners for attending the trial was the reason for the delay, the court would have to withdraw the concession extended to them and make all 166 appear (except those medically unfit) before the court everyday, he said.

He directed the prisoners to hand over to the Additional Superintendent a list of persons, who would attend the trial the previous night itself. If the officials continued to defy court directives, he would be constrained to write to the Government and High Court seeking action against them.

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