Should Chargesheets Be Uploaded Online For Public Access? Supreme Court Reserves Order On PIL, Expresses Reservations

The Supreme Court on Monday reserved orders on whether to issue notice on a PIL which seeks a direction that police and investigating agencies like CBI, ED etc., should upload the chargesheet filed in cases in a public platform for easy access by the general public.During the admission hearing, a bench comprising Justices MR Shah and CT Ravikumar expressed certain reservations about the idea. The bench commented that if chargesheets are made available to public, they are likely to be misused."If FIRs are given to those unrelated to the case, busybodies, NGOs might misuse it", Justice Shah observed as soon as the writ petition filed by RTI activist and investigative journalist Sourav Das was taken up.Justice CT Ravikumar pointed out that the Supreme Court's judgment in the Vijay Madanlal Choudhary case (which upheld the PMLA provisions) had held that ECIR was not akin to FIR and hence the accused was not entitled to a copy of the same. Therefore, the judge expressed a doubt whether a direction can be issued to the ED to publicly upload the chargesheets."Chargesheets cannot be given to everybody", Justice Shah added.On behalf of the petitioner, Advocate Prashant Bhushan relied on a 2016 ruling in Youth Bar Association of India v. Union of India, (2016) 9 SCC 473, in which the top court directed copies of first information reports to be published within 24 hours of their registration on the police or state government’s website, unless the offenses are sensitive in nature. On the strength of this decision, it was argued that the logic of disclosure would apply more strongly to charge-sheets, because while FIRS were based on unsubstantiated allegations, chargesheets were filed only after due investigation.The counsel also relied on National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy approved by the Union Cabinet in 2012 that sought to facilitate access to public data and information in both human-readable and machine-readable forms. “There is no reason why the information contained in charge-sheets, where the investigation has been concluded, the evidence has been examined extensively, and a finding has been reached, should not be published on the website of the prosecuting agency or the state government. This is the kind of information about which every member of the public is entitled to be informed,” Bhushan contended.The counsel further argued that a charge-sheet, not unlike an FIR, was a ‘public document’, since the filing of a charge-sheet was an act of a public official in discharge of their official duties and as such, came under the definitional ambit of ‘public document’ given in Section 74 of the Evidence Act, 1872. Therefore, a charge-sheet filed by a police department, or an investigative agency, Bhushan claimed, would be subject to the discipline of Section 76 of the Act that mandated public disclosure of any public document by a public officer having custody of such document to a person having a ‘right to inspect’. Bhushan drew support from other statutory enactments such as the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Right to Information Act, 2005 as well. The main thrust of the petitioner’s argument was that not only the Evidence Act, but also the Right to Information Act and the judgments of the High Courts and Central Information Commissions vis-à-vis charge-sheets envisaged that charge-sheets were public documents and thus, available for public disclosure. Bhushan argued, “A charge-sheet filed by a police authority is definitely an act or a record of an act by a public official. Any public document should be given to a person who has the right to demand that. It is our argument that such a document would be disclosable under the Right to Information Act.” He also insisted, “It is the duty of every public authority to put out the information suo motu.”In this connection, it was also pointed out that Section 6(2) of the Right to Information Act provided that no reason or justification was required to seek information. The counsel said, “Any person has the right to seek a copy of the charge-sheet. Under the Right to Information Act, it cannot be asked whether the person seeking the information is connected. Under this Act, the ambit of disclosable information is very wide.”Bhushan also stated that after a chargesheet is filed, trial is to take place in an "open court", where public can have access. Therefore, he argued that the reliefs claimed by the petitioner were in line with the concept of 'open court'."“We will consider the submissions and pass a detailed order", the bench said after the hearing. The petitioner argued that citizens had a legal and constitutional right to ‘proactive disclosure of charge-sheets’ since the right to know was a fundamental right emanating from Articles 19(1)(a) and 21 of the Constitution. According to the petitioner, the inability to access charge-sheets also interfered with the right of the press to faithfully report on crimes and criminal trials that were held in open...

Should Chargesheets Be Uploaded Online For Public Access? Supreme Court Reserves Order On PIL, Expresses Reservations

Awstika Das

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