India News | Petitioners Not Giving Due Respect to Court Orders Do Not Deserve Leniency: Court
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. If a party does not believe in giving due respect to the court's orders or mandate of law, they are not entitled to any leniency, a Delhi court said, dismissing a plea for waiver of costs imposed earlier.
New Delhi, Jan 29 (PTI) If a party does not believe in giving due respect to the court's orders or mandate of law, they are not entitled to any leniency, a Delhi court said, dismissing a plea for waiver of costs imposed earlier.
Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramachala was hearing the plea by Akil Ahmed alias Papad, who had earlier been directed to pay Rs 10,000 as costs for his counsels not turning up to cross-examine prosecution witness Constable Gyan Singh after he identified the petitioner as a culprit in a 2020 northeast Delhi riot case.
The matter pertains to rioting and arson allegedly by an unlawful assembly comprising Papad and others under the Dayalpur police station limits in February 2020 during the communal riots.
On January 20, the court directed Papad to deposit the costs as his counsels remained absent on the first date of cross-examination and on the second date, they refused to cross-examine the constable, saying a senior lawyer was not present.
This was an "unprofessional" approach by the counsels and they did not take care of their duties towards the accused and the court, the judge had observed while imposing the costs.
In an order passed on January 24, the court noted that Papad had filed a plea seeking a waiver of the cost and said that his conduct had not been good.
"There has to be a limit to taking a lenient approach," it said, adding that in the "latest show of unprofessionalism," Papad and his counsels filed the present plea only on the evening of January 23.
"This shows the mindset of the applicant (Papad) and (his) counsels as to how much regard they had for the orders passed by the court. If a party does not believe in giving due respect to the orders of the court or the mandate of law, he is not entitled to seek any lenient approach from the court of law," it added.
Rejecting the argument that the accused was poor and hence, unable to pay the costs, the court said, "If a litigant or his counsel opt to act as per their sweet will and their whims in defiance to the mandate of law, he cannot be entertained on the grounds of such plea of poverty."
"Keeping in view all these conducts of the applicant and deliberate ignorance to the directions of the court, I do not find the applicant entitled to any further leniency," the judge said, rejecting the application.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)