Judicial proceedings in the State are all set to undergo a major change with the Madras High Court having decided to provide studio-based video-conferencing facilities in 233 out of 254 subordinate court complexes, housing 1,049 courts.
The facilities will be used for hearing all matters, including remands, bail applications and civil as well as criminal trials.
The High Court has also framed elaborate statutory rules which govern the conduct of court proceedings through video-conferencing.
Registrar General C. Kumarappan has communicated the rules to all Principal District Judges in Tamil Nadu as well as Puducherry, with a request to communicate them to all judicial officers serving under their control and also to members of the local bar associations.
Chief Justice Vijaya Kamlesh Tahilramani had recently inaugurated the process of establishing the video-conferencing facility in court complexes at 32 district headquarters in the first phase.
The facility would be extended to all other courts under the guidance of the High Court’s computer committee chaired by Justice T.S. Sivagnanam. This would free the judicial officers from the trouble of travelling to collectorates for using the facility.
Minimum requisites
Under the video-conferencing rules notified in the government gazette, such a facility can be used at the instance of the courts or on an application filed by the parties concerned, though the courts concerned will have the final say on using it.
The minimum requisites for the facility are a desktop or a laptop computer with internet connectivity, a printer, a device to ensure uniterrupted power supply, a video camera, microphones and speakers and a document visualiser.
The required infrastructure should be available at both the ‘court point’ as well as the ‘remote point’ and the applicant preferring to use the facility should bear the costs incurred. The hearings would be conducted only during working hours of Indian courts and a witness in another country should not plead any inconvenience on account of time difference, the rules state.
They also require the presiding judge to record the demeanour of witnesses at the time of examination.
Though neither the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC) nor the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) require courts to obtain signatures of witnesses on their depositions, as a matter of abundant precaution, such signatures could be obtained in cases of depositions made through video-conferencing.
The depositions recorded at the court point could be sent by mail to the remote point where the witnesses could sign on the printouts and forward scanned copies to the court.
The rules also permit use of digital signatures and, in case of perjury, they state that not only the witnesses but also those who induced the witnesses to make false statements on oath will be taken to task.
Further, the entire depositions on video will be recorded at the court point and an encrypted master copy will be retained by the court.