Mattoo case has undermined public faith in the law — Legal experts

“The case has undermined public faith in the law. If the country’s top-most investigating agency fudges evidence in an important murder case, we can only feel shattered. If this can happen in the Capital, imagine the plight of thousands of victims of rape, murder and torture in the country’s backwaters!” criminal lawyer Rajiv Dhawan says.

To restore the public faith, he suggests, both the legal fraternity and the decision makers need to take desperate measures. Before challenging the acquittal of the main accused in the High Court, a stringent action should first be initiated against all those responsible for fabricating evidence or tempering with it.

The legal fraternity also refuses to accept that judges are helpless in such cases. It really depends on the judge himself what action he chooses to take for delivering justice, irrespective of the consequences, they maintain while specifying examples (see box).

“We may laud the judge (G P Thareja) for exposing glaring lapses on part of the CBI and the Delhi Police, but a categorical statement that he is convinced of the guilt of the accused contradicts the acquittal,” Dhawan says, adding that if a judge comes blind to the court, he can only say that the evidence presented before him doesn’t quite add up to convict the accused and, therefore, he is released giving him the benefit of doubt.

The judges, Dhawan states, have all the powers to pull up the prosecuting agencies during the course of trial and summon witnesses under section 311 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) “to ensure an investigative justice, as opposed to judicial decision, in the case.” While the latter is self-explanatory, the former refers to ensuring justice in the investigation process as well during the trial stage.

Advocate Jatan Singh, who is currently handling several criminal cases in the Tees Hazari courts, quotes a recent Supreme Court judgement, wherein an accused similarly acquitted by the district courts was later convicted by the High Court, despite hostile witnesses and inadequate evidence “because the judge knows, prima facie, that the crime was committed.”

The defence challenged the order in the apex court, which confirmed the High Court judgement. “If a wrong man gets convicted by a lower court, there are High Courts and then the Supreme Court to undo the injustice. But the guilty of a heinous crime should not be let off at the district court stage,” advocate Ashok Arora.

While both aggrieved private party (Priyadarshani Mattoo’s parents) and the state can challenge the judgement in the Delhi High Court, Dhawan cautions that it will be foolish on part of the state to go in for such an appeal to merely salvage the reputation of its own agencies.

“In most such indictments, the police or the CBI are more worried about saving their face, rather than the actual case. The state should challenge the acquittal on the question of the evidence, which judge Thareja himself felt was tampered with,” he says, while adding that when there is insufficient corroboration, all untampered evidence could find strength from each other (or interlock with other evidences, in legalese) to establish guilt.

Senior lawyer and former Union Law Minister Shanti Bhushan, however, sounds sceptical when he says, “My hunch is that nothing more will ever come out of it. Those who tampered with the case wouldn’t have left any tracks behind.”