Mumbai: In a surprising move, the special MCOCA court on Monday shunted the usual practice of first hearing the prosecution on the quantum of punishment and recorded submissions of convicts who pleaded for leniency.
Defence lawyers objected to the move and requested the court to first hear the prosecution as generally practiced by courts. Counsel for the accused Yug Choudhry contented, “There are only two options and convicts will be awarded either life or death sentence and if prosecution is not seeking capital punishment for any of the accused then we will not argue because the other option is life sentence.”
He also said that they had come to know from media reports that the prosecution would seek death for a few convicts and defence does not know who these convicts are and they will be constrained to argue in length for each and every accused. “If the prosecution argues first and seeks death sentence for five or six persons then we will argue only for them,” he added.
However the judge said, “You presume prosecution will be seeking death penalty for all the accused and argue considering this.” Defence lawyer Prakash Shetty then argued on behalf of Kamal Ansari, Faisal Shaikh and Ehtesham Siddiqui requesting minimum sentence for them.
Arguing for lesser punishment and against capital punishment, advocate Shetty contended that awarding capital punishment was exception and life imprisonment was the rule. He said that the evidence adduced by the prosecution was shadowed by doubts and hence the court should not award capital punishment.
In the meantime, advocate Choudhary moved applications on behalf of three accused seeking reports of the probation officer on their conduct during the period that they had spent in jail so far. He sought the reports so that the court could judge if there was any chance of their reformation or not. He also sought medical records of the convicts to prove they did not lie about their illnesses. The court on Monday ordered the jail authorities to produce medical reports of all the convicts, and posted the matter on Tuesday for passing order on the applications seeking reports of probation officers about conduct of all the convicts.
