Court VC room opened at Berhampur SP office

Berhampur: A ‘Court Video Conference (VC) Room’ was inaugurated at the office of Berhampur SP by DIG Southern Range Sarthak Sarangi on Thursday. Berhampur SP Saravana Vivek M and other officers of Berhampur police were present.

Official witnesses like serving police officers, retired police officers, doctors and scientific officers can give evidence sitting in this room. Officers can give evidence to any court within Odisha through this VC room.

Officers often face difficulties due to their other engagements to give evidence in court cases pending in other districts. This in turn affects the court proceedings. This VC system will ensure timely evidence deposition by official witnesses and save time of the government officers and also the court.

The project, mooted by Orissa High Court in 2019, aimed at reducing pendency of cases in lower courts by appropriate use of technology and bringing the accused, witnesses, lawyer and judge on a single screen through a secure network. Three things are required for video conferencing -- good broadband connection; good devices; and observance of social etiquette and conduct of people, where if one person is speaking, others must put their devices on mute.

The video-conferencing facilities are currently available at many subordinate courts in the State, sources said. This is also an improvement in the delivery of justice so that pendency of cases will be reduced to a considerable extent.

It involves setting up an internet protocol-based video conferencing system across the courts and jails. This has proved to be a time-consuming affair as the proceedings of one court are required to wait till completion of proceedings of another.