New delhi: Insisting that it will not be able to print a copy of the 17.5k-page chargesheet each for all 15 accused in the "main conspiracy" case related to the north-east Delhi riots, the Delhi Police on Wednesday asked the Delhi High Court to set aside the October 21 trial court order directing it to provide physical copies of the chargesheet to all the 15 accused.
Several of the counsels of the accused had earlier requested Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat to direct the prosecution to provide hard copies of the chargesheet filed against their clients, in addition to the softcopies already made available to them. In an order passed on October 21, ASJ Rawat pulled up the Delhi Police, observing that "it is not impressed with prosecution citing pending sanction for funds to provide the physical chargesheets".
Moving the Delhi High Court against the same, police in its plea said that "the trial court has failed to take into account that the prosecution readily offered to supply electronic format copy of the chargesheet which was sufficient compliance of the mandate of law and thus there was no justification to direct the investigative agency to supply a physical copy of the chargesheet".
The plea further said that "the investigative agency is not assigned any corpus of funds for getting copies of the chargesheet prepared and as such it has limited resources".
Justice Suresh Kumar Kait listed the matter for further hearing on November 6.