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The court noted that the CCTV footages were with breaks and no technical fault had been reported earlier.
The Allahabad High Court at Lucknow bench recently ordered forensic examination of the CCTV footage pertaining to an alleged incident of misbehavior with a lady judge by advocates outside a courtroom in Barabanki district last year.
The division bench of Justices Sangeeta Chandra and Narendra Kumar Johari passed the order in view of the fact that the CCTV footages that were placed on record, were of only a few hours each day.
Court questioned as to how, without there being any technical fault, the footages were with breaks. Court opined that the CCTV footage could have been tampered with/deleted.
Therefore, court directed the Senior Registrar to send the CCTV footage sent to the high court to the Forensic Science Laboratory, Lucknow with a request to the Director to examine the same, especially with regard to the question of deletion/tampering, and submit his report by the next date of listing.
Court also mentioned that the Senior Registrar had already been directed to keep a hard disc sent from the court of Barabanki with him in safe custody.
The matter will be next heard on August 4, 2023.
Civil judge Arpita Sahu, posted at Ramsanehighat in Barabanki, had last year referred a contempt matter to the high court under Section 15(2) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971.
The lady judge had alleged that officer bearers of the District Bar Association had used offensive language against her. She had named advocates Ritesh Mishra and Mohan Singh as well.
The high court, last year, ordered the Additional District Judge, Barabanki to preserve all relevant CCTV footage, including the areas leading to courtroom-14 where the incident had allegedly happened, for the period between September 6, 2022, and October 8, 2022.
Case Title: State of U.P. v. Ritesh Mishra And 4 Others
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