Jharkhand High Court Chief Justice Virender Singh on Tuesday said that a Remand Advocate has an important role to play in Justice Delivery System (JDS) as he is the pioneer in minimizing the remand of a person arrested by the Police. Speaking as a Chief Guest during the inaugural session of ‘One Day Training Programme for Remand Advocates’ organized by Jharkhand State legal Services Authority at Nyaya Sadan in Ranchi, the Chief Justice also added that the ultimate goal of a Remand Advocate must be to provide justice to the accused.
“Your role is not limited to mark your attendance in the Court but your ultimate goal must be to make justice available to the accused by the police. You will have to act and treat them impartially, whether the accused is poor or rich, insider or outsider, whether he is known to you is an unknown person,” he added.
As many as 160 Remand Advocates coming from five states – Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Bihar along with the Member Secretaries of State legal Services Authority of the respective states attended the training programme where they were told the basics of remand advocacy by the judges of various High Courts.
A Remand Advocate’s biggest achievement is that he succeeds in minimizing the remand period of the accused by one or two days which the police was pleading for a week or so. Pointing out the problems which a Remand advocate has to face in the court, Chef Justice said that case diaries do not reach to the court on time or the petition for remand filed by the prosecution is not made available to him.
“It is redundant to talk about the rights of a detenu unless the case diaries and the petition filed by the prosecution is made available to the Remand Advocates,” said Singh.
Chief Justice of Rajasthan High Court Naveen Sinha, said in his address that they will have to face multifarious challenges as the domain of crime has been changing very rapidly, be it the cyber crime or the economic crime. “You are all lawyers…training is absolutely important as you have been chosen for a purpose. Skill is already there, it will just be sharpened in this workshop,” said Chief Justice Naveen Sinha.
Judge, Jharkhand High Court -cum- Executive Chairman, JHAlSA Justice DN Patel, putting light on the need of importance of Remand Advocates, said that they all should know what must be done under what circumstances.
“Even if a knowledgeable or a resourceful person is there, if he is arrested and spent 24 hours in police custody and produced before the magistrate….. look at his difficulties. He does not have a lawyer; does not have a relative….nobody to defend him. Therefore there is a need to have a remand advocate,” said Justice DN Patel.
“You must know under what circumstances and under what provision, what can be done,” he added.
Jharkhand High Court Judges Justice PK Mohanty and Justice HC Mishra along with Judge, Odisha High Court cum Executive Chairman of State legal Service Authority Justice Vinod Prasad and other judges were also present during the occasion.