Madras HC scoffs at queer acronyms in court orders

Chennai, March 25

Flummoxed with queer abbreviations like 'Acc, Pro & RE' for words 'accused, produced and remand extended,' the Madras High Court has said the court orders and the abbreviations used in them must be clear to common people.

"We find it difficult to understand," remarked a bewildered bench of justices S Nagamuthu and M Sathyanarayanan after coming upon the abbreviations "Acc, Pro and RE" in a judicial order of a Special Judge of NIA court in Puducherry.

"This practice of using unfamiliar abbreviations needs to be necessarily deprecated," said the bench scoffing at the unique acronyms, even as Standing Counsel R Muthukumarasamy took pains to explain that they stood for expressions like “accused, produced and remand extended”.

Orders passed by the courts should be understandable and legible to a common man and the petitioners, the court said.

The bench made the remark while hearing a batch of Habeas Corpus pleas, which contended that between July 18, 2014 and September 12, 2014, six persons booked in an NIA case were in illegal custody and therefore they should be set free.

The petitioners submitted that the Special Judge for NIA cases had not given any specific order of remand and had made only an endorsement on the arrest warrants for the accused with abbreviations like “acc, pro and RE” and hence the custody was illegal.

Concurring with the petitioners' submissions, the court noted that the special judge had not passed any order considering NIA's plea, but only had made an endorsement in the warrant authorising detention in prison.

"In our considered view, this is not in accordance with law," and concurred with the petitioners' counsel that the detainee's custody for the said period was not under a legal remand.

The bench further said a magistrate has to pass a judicial order remanding an accused to custody after hearing him or her.

"Such an order should reflect application of the judicial mind of the magistrate."

Referring to the Supreme Court orders, the court, however, declined to declare the detention of the accused illegal.

Though the detention for the said period was not under a valid order of remand, there was a valid remand order during the subsequent production of the accused, the court noted.

"The detention as of now cannot be stated to be illegal and so they cannot be set at liberty," it said. — PTI