The Bombay High Court on Wednesday said the National Investigation Agency (NIA) court should not have accepted photocopies of statements given by witnesses in the 2008 Malegaon blasts.
A Division Bench of Justices Abhay Oka and A.S. Gadkari was hearing a bunch of appeals filed by accused Sameer Kulkarni raising a contention about the trial court receiving photocopies of confessional statements.
In April 2016, the NIA court had been informed that original documents were untraceable, and in January 2017, it had allowed the agency to use available copies as secondary evidence.
The HC said the photocopies were submitted by the central agency, but the NIA court did not ask the agency to prove that these copies were those of the original documents.
The Bench said, “The question is who took these copies? Have you (NIA) examined the person who made these photocopies? How do you know these copies are those of the original documents? The special court should not have accepted the copies as secondary evidence when their authenticity is not confirmed.”
The agency had earlier told the HC that these statements could not be traced and the trial had been conducted on a regular basis; the secondary copies of the original statements be taken on record.