Mehmood Pracha’s plea on search at his premises: Delhi court order today

On Wednesday, chief metropolitan magistrate Pankaj Sharma had stayed the order till the pendency of Pracha’s plea which had also sought a direction to the police to retrieve only the relevant information from his hard disk in the presence of a magistrate

A Delhi court on Friday will pronounce its decision on a plea by advocate Mehmood Pracha seeking changes in an earlier order of March 2 permitting the police to search his Nizamuddin east premises in an alleged case of tutoring a witness of the north-east Delhi riots.

Mehmood Pracha. (Photo: Twitter)

On Wednesday, chief metropolitan magistrate (CMM) Pankaj Sharma had stayed the order till the pendency of Pracha’s plea which had also sought a direction to the police to retrieve only the relevant information from his hard disk in the presence of a magistrate.

Pracha, who is representing several accused and victims in the north-east Delhi riots cases, said his office was raided by the city police on Tuesday in connection with an FIR alleging that he tutored a witness to initiate a false riots case.

In his application, he said the demand of the investigating agency for the hard disk of his computer was illegal as all the documents were already in the police’s possession from the earlier raid conducted on December 25, 2020.

“They want to threaten my clients. That’s their purpose. In the main Delhi riots cases, they say soft copy is equal to hard copy and we would not give hard copy of charge sheet. Here they don’t want a soft copy,” Pracha said.

Opposing his plea, the city police said that seizing the original hard disk was essential as it ought to be sent to a forensic science laboratory for examination and that a mirror hard disk can be put into Pracha’s computer.