Congress leader Kapil Sibal revealed that the UPA regime tried to bring in tools of technology to make the police investigation airtight, but investigating agencies refused to co-operate.
Mr. Sibal’s revelations on Thursday gains significance as the UPA government had faced flak for the rising level of crime, especially against women.
He said this while arguing a case on the admissibility of electronic records under Section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act before a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha.
He was responding to CJI’s remarks about how trial judges suffer due to lack of technology and criminal trials face chronic delays, made worse by shoddy police work.
Mr. Sibal, who was also Communications and IT minister in the previous government, said a crime investigation was often crippled from within by the investigator himself.
“The person who goes to the crime spot manipulates everything. Someone calls him on the phone and says isko accused mat banao (don’t make him accused),” Mr. Sibal told a three-judge Bench, also comprising Justices Kurian Joseph and Rohinton Nariman.
He recounted the fate of a pilot project the UPA wanted to introduce to aid police work. This would have cleaned up police investigations and ensured that innocents are not framed.
“One of the technology we had was the electronic diary instead of the daily diary. This was connected to a central server and evidence recorded in it could not be tampered with later on,” Mr. Sibal said.
He said another technique was the live video monitoring of crime scene investigation by a forensic expert. “A forensic expert would watch the police officers at the crime scene and tell them to take this or that sample,” he said.
But investigating agencies refused to fall in line. He said the Delhi Police refused to co-operate with the project.
