UP: Police officers, govt doctors to appear virtually in courts

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh Prosecution Department is planning to introduce a new system wherein government officials, mostly policemen and doctors, will be able to record their statements virtually in pending court cases.

This is being done to reduce the pendency of cases in the courts of Uttar Pradesh.

The state government is gearing up to build infrastructure in the districts to have a central, computerised system under which police officers and government doctors can go to the office of the Joint Director of the Prosecution Department and record their statements for speedy proceedings in the courts.

ADG (Prosecution), Dipesh Juneja, said, “There is a huge pendency of cases in the district courts. What happens is that police officers who work in the capacity of investigating officers and doctors in medico-legal cases have to routinely go to the district courts to record their statements. Such officials are regularly transferred from one district to another across the state.

"Because of the geographic size of Uttar Pradesh, it becomes difficult for these officials to physically go to the district courts. For example, one officer who was posted in Western UP and investigated a case there gets transferred to Eastern UP. Now that officer has to take leave, and travel to the district where he was posted earlier.

"This results in the loss of manpower and also requires large amounts of funds for travel, lodging etc. So we plan to have a centralised system where a police officer or a government doctor can go and virtually record their statements. This will help us ensure speedy trials in cases, and also, save money.”

The Prosecution Department plans to launch the initiative in five districts soon -- Lucknow, Prayagraj, Varanasi, Noida, Barabanki, and Varanasi.

“Once the system is operational in these five districts, we will extend it to the other districts as well. In the future, we hope the common people can also give statements to courts remotely from these computerised offices,” said Juneja.

Joint Director (Prosecution), Atul Kumar Ojha, said: “Once an officer retires, he or she is not willing to go to a different district to record evidence. To get allowances for the same is a lengthy process. This system will allow them to do it from wherever they are based after their retirement. We hope to reduce the pendency of cases with this new system.”