Police cannot ignore electronic evidence, says High Court

Police cannot afford to lose evidence collected through gadgets like CCTV cameras and mobile phone cameras found in the hands of the citizen, the Madras High Court has observed. 

A division bench comprising Justice R Sudhakar and Justice PN Prakash while upholding the conviction of a person for murder based on clinching CCTV footage evidence, said the confession of the accused, which is generally called the “queen of evidence” is kept out of judicial reach in India, because our police have still not come out of their colonial mind-set. Therefore, Indian police have to search for evidence, other than police confession, for bringing the guilty to justice.  

Justice N Prakash, who wrote the judgment, also observed that police would soon be relieved of hunting for other material on account of the Information Technology revolution and free availability of gadgets like CCTV cameras, pen cameras and mobile phone cameras.