Indian Express: Mumbai: Friday, October 09, 2015.
The 1,785-odd
Right to Information (RTI) applications that were filed by convicts in the
serial train blasts case primarily Ehtesham Siddiqui eventually did not amount
to much as Special Judge Y D Shinde, who presided over the trial, said these
could not be used as evidence unless proved as per the provisions of the
Evidence Act.
Using the RTI
Act, the convicts had sought their call data records (CDRs) to prove they were
nowhere near the crime scene on the day of the blasts. For the defence, the
CDRs were one of their most crucial evidence.
Apart from
this, Ehtesham Siddiqui questioned the credibility of two important prosecution
witnesses who deposed that co-accused Faisal Shaikh’s house in Bandra was used
for terror activities and that Siddiqui was present there at the time the bombs
were assembled.
At one point
in the judgment copy that runs into 1,839 pages, the special judge observes,
“…the Public Information Officer (PIO) under the RTI Act only gives certified
copies of the record that is available in his office. Such record may be based
on hearsay material or may be sometimes on the basis of incorrect information
provided to that office. The certified copy of such record, therefore, would at
best establish the existence of the original in the office of the PIO. It will
not however dispense with the proof of correctness of its contents, because
there are several factors that may affect the correctness of the contents.”
Among the
instances where RTI applications per se were not used as primary evidence was
the case of one prosecution witness who had seen the convicts keeping big black
rexine bags on the luggage racks. While the witness had said he had boarded the
train as he was on his way to an ENT hospital where he was to meet a person
named Baban Rankhambe, the reply to an RTI plea filed by the convicts at the
BMC hospital said while there was no person by that name working there, a
person called Baban Rongya Kamble did work there. While ruling that this could
not be used to dismiss the testimony of the prosecution witness, the judge
observed, “It appears that there is a strong probability that the witness may
have stated the name Baban Rongya Kamble, but while taking it down, because of
similar phonetics, it was mistakenly understood by all and dictated to the
typist as ‘Baban Rankhambe’.”
At another
point in the judgment, he elaborates, “To my mind, if certain information is
given by a PIO in his letter in reply to an application seeking information,
such information is given for the knowledge of the party seeking that
information. Such information, to my mind, cannot be a substitute for an
evidence and cannot be considered as evidence that is proved under the law. If
such an information is required to be used as evidence of a particular fact it
has to be proved as per the provisions of the Evidence Act.”
Concluding
the part of the judgment titled ‘Documents obtained by the accused under the
RTI Act and produced on record’, the special judge observes, “Such documents
(obtained under RTI) if duly proved as per the provisions of the Indian Evidence
Act can only be considered and referred to.”
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