Bombay High Court takes suo motu notice of ‘copy-pasted’ witness statements by the police

Bombay High Court addresses copy-pasting of witness statements by Maharashtra Police, directs State to issue guidelines.

The Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court took suo motu cognisance of the practice of copy-pasting witness statements by the Maharashtra Police and directed the State government to issue necessary guidelines to put an end to it.

“We have noticed that even in serious offences, the investigating officer recording the statements of the witnesses under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure has literally copy-pasted the statements,” the Division Bench of Justices Vibha Kankanwadi and Sanjay A. Deshmukh said, passing the order.

Even the paragraphs began with the same words and ended with the same words, the court noted. “The culture of copy-pasted statements is dangerous and may, in certain cases, unnecessarily provide advantage to the accused persons. In such circumstances, the seriousness of a genuine case may vanish,” the court said.

The Bench observed that two witnesses could not provide completely identical statements, with the only difference appearing to be in the relationship of the witness to a deceased person or an informant.

“We have noticed this in many cases, including cases under Section 498-A of the Indian Penal Code. We may also wonder whether these witnesses were really called by the police for making a statement under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure or not, but their statements appear in the chargesheet,” the order said.

The court had made similar observations in another matter, the Bench said, adding that copy-pasted statements in cases of serious offences, including under Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code, required it to take suo motu cognisance of the issue, and consider what challenges or shortcomings the investigating officers faced when they resorted to such a practice.

The observations came in the case of a family from Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district that sought the quashing of criminal proceedings against its members for alleged abetment in the suicide of a 17-year-old girl.