Any eager, animated or inflexible assertion of an advocate cannot be allowed to prejudice the accused, a Delhi court said while denouncing the conduct of a counsel for insisting on hearing an application in the alleged land-for-jobs scam case against former railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and others. Special Judge Vishal Gogne, who was hearing the arguments on charges against the accused persons, expressed his displeasure at the "contrived manner" in which the application was moved, saying the heightened insistence of the counsel appeared "a disguise for delay". There are 103 accused persons in the case because of which the court is hearing the arguments on a day-to-day basis. The court said the counsel for one of the accused, a school principal listed as Accused 20 (A 20), moved an application on Thursday with the prayer that his letter dated June 27, 2022, to an investigating officer (IO) be treated as a confessional statement and disregarded by the court. It said, "The court finds the prayer in the application to be in the nature of an argument on the admissibility of a particular document (the letter) being purportedly inadmissible." The court said the advocate was imploring the court to treat the document as a confession and pass a speaking order even before the arguments on charges were concluded against all the accused persons.
Denouncing the counsel's conduct, judge Gogne said, "The court finds the insistence of the counsel for A 20 upon the application being decided before he may lead other arguments to be a conscious ploy to seek a truncated and piecemeal as well as premature finding from the court on issues relating to charge. "More so, when the document in question is a letter from the accused to the IO and is not cited as a confession or a disclosure statement by the CBI. The heightened insistence of the counsel is perceived by the court as a disguise for delay." The judge said that no such exercise can be conducted for appreciating the tenor or admissibility of a document even prior to an order on charge. "Being conscious that any eager, animated or inflexible assertion of the counsel ought not to prejudice the accused, the court would refrain from making further observations regarding the contrived manner in which the application has been moved so as to avoid arguments on charges on other aspects," the judge said. He then granted a final opportunity to the accused school principal to advance arguments on the charges on August 11. According to the prosecution, the case pertains to Group-D appointments made in West Central Zone of the Railways based in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, during Lalu Prasad's tenure as the railway minister from 2004 to 2009 in return for land parcels gifted or transferred by the recruits in the name of the RJD supremo's family or associates.