Delhi High Court: The Division Bench comprising of Vipin Sanghi and I.S. Mehta, JJ., pronounced an order in regard to the action report of the Delhi Police, that in accordance to display of immense credibility of performance on the part of the Delhi Police, digital recording of the proceedings should be conducted.
The action report pointed out some very pertinent issues, that the existing technology would soon become obsolete and the devices which are used for storage now, won’t be operable in the near future, which would make retrieving the data an impossible task. The retrieval mechanism as suggested in the report was that it needs to be set with huge capacity which would need “cloud computing technology”.
The High Court while addressing the issues stated that they do not seem to be insurmountable and with the involvement of the experts all the stated issues in the report could be resolved easily.
Further, the Court suggested that digital recording of the proceedings be conducted by the police, inter alia, Section 161 CrPC should completely take over the existing mechanisms/procedures. Court also opined that the storage of digital media in whichever way it is stored is far less space-consuming than the space required for preservation of manually recorded proceedings/statements on paper. In regard to funds needed to adopt such methods, State would be responsible to arrange the same, either by Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi or Central Government.
The matter was further listed for 10-09-2018. [Rakesh Kumar v. State (NCT of Delhi), CRL.A 395 of 2000, Order dated 20-08-2018]