A day after telling the court that he wanted to cross-examine 34 injured 26/11 victims, defence advocate KP Pawar said on Thursday that he wanted to admit the witnesses.
A day after telling the court that he wanted to cross-examine 34 injured 26/11 victims, defence advocate KP Pawar said on Thursday that he wanted to admit the witnesses.
First additional principal judge, ML Tahaliyani was discussing the programme for Friday when 34 injured victims, who are not eyewitnesses, would depose. Pawar had already cross-examined 22 inquest panchnama witnesses by then.
The judge asked him, “What do you want to ask the witnesses?”
Pawar stood up and said, “I want to see whether the injuries tally or not (with the medical report).”
The judge then asked, “What are you trying to achieve then?”
Pawar stood silent for a while and said, “I want to admit them.”
His junior, VD More, however, protested this decision and said, “I don’t think we should admit all of them. Some may have identified the accused in the identification parade.”
Judge Tahaliyani was a bit taken aback and said, “Mr More, I have some information about your experience. You have conducted eight murder trials. You tell me how a person who has not seen the accused can be part of the identification parade.”
The judge then told them that the plan to call the 34 witnesses stands for now. “You are not able to decide. Let them come. You can decline to cross some of them. We’ll discharge whoever you don’t want to cross-examine.”
The remaining 12 witnesses who were present when the inquest panchnama was being conducted are also likely to turn up on Friday.The judge has given Pawar one day’s time to decide on how many post-mortem doctors should be summoned for cross-examination. “Don’t be under pressure to submit your plea. You take your time to read the papers,” said the judge.
Pawar also admitted the affidavit of one Ashok Dongaonkar, who had surveyed the damage at CST. Pawar had on Tuesday said he wanted to cross-examine Ashok but changed his mind on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, one of the witnesses, Prabhavati, told the court that she had not seen any dead body at the hospital where she had gone to visit her friend, Alka, a sweeper who was injured at CST.
“I did not see any dead body there. I do not know the contents of the panch statement. I just signed it,” Prabhavati said.
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