Tapped phone talk valid proof under MCOCA: SC

Verdict will affect all pending cases

NEW DELHI: Providing a shot in the arm to investigating agencies, the Supreme Court on Monday held that the recorded telephone conversation of an accused is admissible as evidence under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).

The matter had reached the apex court after the Bombay high court in 2003 had upheld the legality of the act but quashed provisions relating to interception of telephone conversations. Contending that the act was necessary to counter organised crime and syndicates run by the underworld, the Maharashtra government had appealed against the high court ruling.

Upholding the legality of sections 13, 14, 15 and 16 of the MCOCA, a bench of chief justice KG Balakrishnan and justices RV Raveendran and MK Sharma also restored the provisions the high court had struck down earlier.

Analysts are of the opinion that the judgment will have a direct bearing on all pending cases in which vital information or evidence obtained under MCOCA had not been included for the trial court’s consideration.

Noted lawyer Manoj Goel, who appeared in this case, says film financier and diamond merchant Bharat Shah, however, will not be affected by the judgment. Shah was charged under the act for having underworld links and the police had recorded alleged telephonic conversations between him and underworld don Shakeel. He was acquitted of MCOCA charges but convicted under the IPC for suppressing information from the police.

Goel says the evidence against him had been obtained under the Telegraph Act as well as under MCOCA. The high court did not consider the evidence against Shah under MCOCA as it held two sections unconstitutional, but it examined the same evidence collected under the Telegraph Act and ordered his acquittal. “The case against Bharat
Shah cannot be reopened as a consequence of this judgment,” said Goel.
It was in a petition filed by Shah that the high court had quashed certain sections of  MCOCA. These included section 13 (appointment of competent authority), section 14 (authorisation of interception of wire, electronic or oral communication), section 15 (constitution of committee for review of authorisation orders) and section 16 (prohibition of interception and disclosure of wire, electronic or oral communication.

Shah and some others who were charged under the controversial law for alleged links with the underworld had challenged MCOCA’s constitutional validity. They had contended that MCOCA was an attempt by state government to enact a law whose provisions already existed in the Indian Telegraph Act, 1955.

However, the SC bench held that a state was legally empowered to make special laws to combat special organised crimes like extortion, gun-running, money-laundering, terrorism and insurgency — even on subject matters like telephone communication and insurgency, figuring in the Union List.