Bhima Koregaon: Special Court Rejects Arun Ferreira's Plea For Copy Orders Authorising Email Interception By NIA

A special NIA has rejected the application filed by lawyer Arun Ferreira, an accused in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case, alleging that NIA illegally intercepted emails exchanged between him and co-accused Rona Wilson and used it as evidence. Ferreira had sought a copy of the order permitting the agency to intercept their emails.The court however allowed accused lawyer Surendra Gadling's plea against the obstruction by prison officials from receiving letters and personal communications sent by his wife and advocates to him at the prison. Special Judge Rajesh Katariya pronounced the order when the accused were produced from prison. Gadling had filed an application alleging that the personal communication sent by his wife on December 11, last year also included citations, medicines, postal slips of earlier sent applications/ complaints/ RTIs were not handed over to him by the Taloja prison authorities with malafide intentions. According to Gadling's application, the communication was sent on December 11, 2021 and received at the prison on December 13, 2021 itself, yet it was being held back for reasons unknown to him, despite repeated requests to hand it over to him. He alleged that several parcels containing court documents of other cases and letters from friends were not handed over to him, and further added that the prison authorities opened the parcels and packets in the absence of the prisoners. The court has now asked prison authorities to hand him all his parcels and letters. In a separate development from the same case, the application filed Ferreira pertained to alleged email communications between email-ids sreelal@riseup.net and lokayan2015@riseup.net, which were intercepted by the Pune police as the earlier investigation agency on July 9, 2018, July 14, 2018, August 6, 2018 and August 12, 2018. According to Ferreira's application, the charge sheet showed that material derived from these email communications was being lead as evidence by the prosecution, therefore he was entitled to a copy of the order passed by the Competent authority authorizing interception of these emails before the trial could start. According to Ferreira, these emails were downloaded within an hour of being sent to the other email id allegedly belonging to one of the absconding accused. Ferreira claimed that this interception fell under the definition of interception as per the provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which took over the case form Pune police, however, denied Ferreira's claim and said that electronic devices seized during the course of investigation from Ferreira's co-accused Rona Wilson were sent for forensic examination to a forensic science laboratory, that the data was analysed and accordingly the email ID sreelal@riseup.net and its password was recovered. The agency further stated that it is on this basis that the email communication between the two email ids was downloaded after following the necessary procedure. "It is submitted that the application filed by the applicant/accused is devoid of merits for a primary reason that the applicant/accused has primarily come to a conclusion that the said evidence was procured by interception after obtaining due directions from the Competent authority to carry out the same," the NIA's reply stated. The court rejected Ferreira's application.

Bhima Koregaon: Special Court Rejects Arun Ferreira's Plea For Copy Orders Authorising Email Interception By NIA

Sharmeen Hakim

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