TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: Rape accused Tarun Tejpal charged the Crime Branch of purposely submitting irrelevant video footage of national news channels to the central forensic science laboratory at Hyderabad for cloning.
In his submission before the Additional Sessions-I Judge Pramod Kamat on Tuesday, the former Tehelka editor also accused the investigation agency of handing him non-functioning DVDs of the alleged rape incident.
In May this year, the Fast Track Court (FTC) had asked the State to hand over the unedited portion of CCTV footage of the area near the lift of a Bambolim hotel to Tejpal. It had directed that copies, mirror image, clone copies of all the material, hard drives, electronic records produced in the court along with the chargesheet be given to him within 20 days. The video was a part of the voluminous chargesheet filed by the Crime Branch before the chief judicial magistrate in February.
“Certain documents which we did not ask for examination have been sent to the CFSL for developing clone copies. This footage was shown on NDTV and Aaj Tak (news) channels which we do not want at all,” Adv Rajeev Gomes, appearing for Tejpal, who was also present in the court, told the judge.
Moreover, he alleged, some DVDs that Crime Branch claims are CCTV grabs of the area in the hotel, do not play. “The DVDs furnished to us don’t even play. It is so dangerous to accept these materials.”
