Surrounded by wooden furniture and a huge pile of fat files, about seven Assistant Public Prosecutors are sitting with their heads sunk deep within the pages.
Some of them are scribbling on the pages, while others are just turning them over.
The prosecution branch, located on the first floor above the lockup in Patiala House Courts, houses 23 public prosecutors, including Additional PPs, Assistant PPs, and Chief Prosecutor.
To deal with thousands of cases, all they have are two functional computers, two permanent stenographers and rickety furniture.
Right opposite the room where the APPs sit, the police files of pending cases dating back to 2001 are lying around on tables and inside iron cabinets.
Battling years of negligence, the pages are lying scattered on the floor, most of them torn.
“The police files lying here are of cases that are pending in court. These are the same files that are taken for hearing. We do not know how many pages are missing in the files. It is a room open to all and no one is guarding it,” said the Assistant PP.
This is the same office that public prosecutors come back to after spending hours in court representing the State. It is 9.45 a.m. and Additional PP S.K. Kain enters the CBI court for cases pertaining to bail and revisions. A few minutes ago, he was informed that the prosecutor on duty at the CBI court is on leave and hence he has been assigned the task.
Dates after dates
For the next three hours, he stands in front of the judge as cases are heard, at an average of three-four minutes per case, and dates given.
Mr. Kain goes through the case files for the first time after they are handed to him by the Investigating Officers.
In one of the cases, Mr. Kain quickly goes through the offence from the file and reads it out to the judge. “Three persons cheated a man by giving him a lift and fooled him into giving all his belongings in an envelope after which they fled,” he continued. The hearing ends with the accused’s counsel seeking another date.
In another case, a 26-year-old woman alleged rape by a government employee working in the Railways in 2007. She approached the police in 2018 after the accused refused to marry her.
As the accused’s counsel seeks anticipatory bail and the judge is about to give the next hearing date, Mr. Kain stands on the side as the woman steps forward to ask the judge if she can speak.
“Mujhe aap bas ye bata dijiye ki uski arresting hui hai ya nahin? Mujhe use jaan ka khatra hai kyunki usne mujhe complaint wapas lene ke liye dhamkaya hai [Please tell me if he has been arrested? I am scared for my life because he has threatened me to withdraw my case],” she said. The next date of hearing is on March 18.
The woman, outside the court, alleges that she has no idea whether she has a public prosecutor assigned as she does not see anyone fighting the case on her behalf.
Explaining the reason why he cannot argue in her case, Mr. Kain said that prosecutors hardly get time to work on the cases.
“An Additional PP has about 10 cases to appear for daily and over 50 cases on an average. The files are voluminous and impossible to read. Therefore, everything happens on the spot mostly. However, I am aware of the cases where I am the regular public prosecutor,” he said, adding that if the Investigating Officer in the case is “good” then it helps.
An Assistant PP, visibly frustrated, said, “We cannot possibly be present at two places at the same time unless we have some superpowers.” The prosecutor said in case his colleague is on leave, he has to fill in for him and cannot attend his own cases. In case if he misses any case, a penalty is levelled for his absence.
“We have to scrutinise chargesheets and give our opinion on the same whether the case holds or not. However, the final power is with the Assistant Commissioner of Police concerned to submit the chargesheet in the case, which makes the whole exercise meaningless because even if we point out loopholes, the document is submitted,” he said.
Apart from that, the prosecutors do all the paperwork themselves, mostly handwritten with no support staff. The Assistant PPs say they do not have computers to maintain their documents or to make work easier and efficient.
Meanwhile, Mr. Kain heads to court no. 37 where he is the regular PP and helps an Inspector translate his witness statement in a 2016 drug bust case in which 46 kg ganja was recovered from two accused leading to their arrest.
“The Inspector cannot speak English fluently This is also our job — to translate their statement from Hindi to English,” he said.
However, the biggest concern of prosecutors at Patiala House Courts is their office, which is undergoing renovation. The prosecutors are extremely unhappy with the new set-up which they say is like “babus”.
Chief Prosecutor Ahmad Khan and Additional PP Masood Ahmed said, “We are being allotted work stations [one desk each shared by two persons in an open hall] instead of separate chambers. We have registered our protest in the matter before the Building Maintenance Committee headed by judges,” he said.
Lack of privacy
An Assistant PP said they need chambers so they can speak to their clients one-to-one in privacy, a basic need for an advocate.
“We deserve some respect and dignity. All the issues have been flagged several times but nothing has happened,” he said.
Recently, slain journalist Soumya Vishwanathan’s parents approached Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal alleging that the public prosecutor in the case had been skipping hearings after which the PP was issued a show-cause notice.