HC raps trial court for turning Uliburu mining case into ‘farce’

Cuttack: The Orissa high court has indicted a trial court for being a ‘silent spectator’ to the ‘laid-back attitude’ of the prosecution that has turned the trial in the Rs 1,500-crore Uliburu mining scam into a ‘farce’.
The court hauled up the trial court for forgetting that the delay caused by the lapses of the prosecution might hamper the delivery of justice. “Everything is in the sphere of uncertainty (in the case). The sufferer is not only the accused but the state of Odisha and the people who are eagerly waiting to see the verdict in this multicrore mining scam,” justice S K Sahoo said.
Sahoo made the observation on Wednesday while rejecting the bail plea of Deepak Gupta, a key accused in the mining scam that involves iron ore mines in the Keonjhar region. This was the fifth time Gupta’s bail application was rejected by the high court. The last time this happened was on August 24, 2017.
“The right to speedy trial is a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution. The denial of this right corrodes public faith in the justice delivery system but neither the prosecution nor the trial court has taken care of this,” Sahoo said.
In his 55-page judgement, Sahoo said, “In the past two years, the accused persons have not played truant with the trial or corroded the sanctity of the proceedings. Rather, the prosecution has made the trial farcical. The trial court has been a silent spectator to the lackadaisical attitude of the prosecution in ensuring the attendance of the witnesses on different dates. Thereby, it has caused a mockery of the trial.”
On the perusal of the case records — which indicate that of the 178 chargesheet witnesses, the prosecution is likely to examine 147 — the high court found that in the past two years, the trial court had been posting the trial of the case on two or three dates every month and issuing summons after summons but only 16 witnesses had been examined.
“The trial court seems to not have verified the status of the summons issued to the witnesses. It has not taken any step to ensure the attendance of the witnesses who did not appear on the receipt of the summons,” Sahoo said.
Expressing dismay over the delay in the trial, Sahoo said, “In two years after the rejection of the last bail application on July 24, 2017, by this court, the prosecution has examined only 16 witnesses — an average of eight per year — on the 62 dates on which the case was posted.”
Sahoo, however, did not grant bail to Gupta as there has been no change in the circumstances following the rejection of his last bail application. But he did give Gupta the liberty to move for interim bail in the trial court if it failed to take steps to ensure the attendance of witnesses and examine them by December this year.