It's adjournment season at the Pune courts. Court cases in the Pune district and sessions court involving under-trial prisoners traditionally receive a setback during the 10 days of Ganpati festival as the police force is busy with bandobast duties,leaving no time for them to bring the accused lodged in Yerawada Jail to the court. The prosecution,in such cases,request the court to skip the 10 days of Ganpati festival while giving a further date. This happens in most cases as police are busy with Ganapati bandobast duty and have no time to escort the accused from Yerawada Prison, said additional public prosecutor Ujjwala Pawar. In a prime example of this,the police had moved an application before additional sessions judge N P Dhote stating that the police will be unable to bring the accused Mirza Himayat Inayat Baig on the next date of hearing -September 3 as they will be busy in Ganpati festival bandobast in the city. Since it is a sensitive case,they also requested that the proceedings be done through video conferencing. However,in many cases videoconferencing is not feasible and hence the date is merely put off for two-three weeks. The Nayana Pujari gangrape and murder trial,too has been put off till October,firstly because the police have no time during the 10 days of Ganpati fetsival and later because one of the defence lawyers has to be in Kerala for another case. Joint Commissioner of Police Sanjeevkumar Singhal said,While it is true that sometime we have to put the court-duty policemen on bandobast during Ganapati,but we try to do it only on the immersion day. This year,of course,it is a Sunday and court holiday. Even as most sessions cases suffer,it is not that the court work is entirely hampered. Proceedings of cases in which the accused are on bail continue do take place. Also,civil appeal and revisions that remain pending on normal days due to sessions cases,are taken up during these ten days, said senior lawyer Harshad Nimbalkar. There are around 1000 sessions cases pending before the Pune court,he added.
