New Delhi:The Delhi High Court has made various suggestions, for ensuring speedy proceedings, to the trial court dealing with the cases involving foreign nationals who attended the religious congregation at the Nizamuddin Markaz earlier this year, including holding a case management hearing and firstly disposing of cases where the accused is ready to plead guilty or enter a plea bargain.
"Firstly, post all 48 charge sheets and 11 supplementary charge sheets, stated to have been filed, on the same date, for a case management hearing. At this hearing, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) may divide the cases into batches and sub-batches according to the nationality of the accused people and/or offences alleged or on some other rational and useful basis," a single-judge bench of Justice Anup J. Bhambani said.
The court also said that after receiving a response on whether the accused will plead guilty, enter a plea bargain or claim trial, the CMM may segregate these matters based upon their responses. "Cases, where accused, are pleading guilt or entering plea bargains may be disposed of first," it proposed.
The court also suggested that for each of these stages, the bench may designate a specific date and time when exclusively these matters would be taken up, which could even be a non-working day so that adequate time and resources could be devoted to facilitate expeditious disposal.
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"The Embassy/High Commission concerned may be requested to arrange for the appearance of the accused persons via video-conferencing and also for identifying the accused persons as per official records/documents," Justice Bhambhani said.
However, the judge clarified that these are only suggestions to plan out the logistics for further proceedings to better manage the cases, and the CMM shall be free to devise their own methods to deal with the cases efficiently and expeditiously.