Mumbai: The National Informatics Centre (NIC)-developed e-Sakshya app has helped police put a habitual offender back in jail. The app which helps police record and upload crime scene evidence, including searches and seizures, directly to the cloud, led to a sessions court setting aside a magistrate’s “perverse order” releasing a habitual offender on the grounds of an illegal arrest. While the accused, Arvind Sodha, claimed he could not understand the grounds of arrest as it was communicated in Marathi, the court noted that video recordings of the accused’s statement had been uploaded to the “E-Sakshya App”, which showed his comprehension of the language.“Moreover, the accused is born and brought up in Mumbai. So also, he has studied in a Marathi medium school… and he had Marathi language from fifth to ninth standards. All the facts are sufficient to hold that the magistrate, without making any inquiry, released the hardened criminal, and the order of release is perverse and the same is required to be set aside for giving an opportunity to the investigation officer to investigate the matter,” additional sessions judge Mujibodeen S Shaikh said recently. The sessions judge said the magistrate blindly believed the statement of a habitual criminal against whom 14 cases including those for murder, attempt to murder and under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) have been registered. Sodha was arrested in an extortion, criminal intimidation and house trespass case filed at Mankhurd police station. The magistrate’s court granted his release on Feb 4. Seeking cancellation of his release, the state argued the magistrate ignored the accused’s educational background and digital evidence proving his linguistic proficiency.The judge directed Sodha to surrender before the investigating officer for probe and remand. “If the respondent (Sodha) will not surrender himself before the IO within two weeks, then the IO may arrest the accused and produce him before the magistrate after mandatory compliance of the legal provision,” the judge said. The state challenged the earlier decision, arguing the magistrate failed to conduct a proper inquiry into whether the accused truly misunderstood the Marathi language or was simply using it as a tactic to avoid custody. The dispute centred on the mandatory communication of the grounds of arrest under BNSS. The prosecution presented records showing Sodha was born and raised in Mumbai and attended Swami Vivekanand Vidyalay, where Marathi was a compulsory subject from the fifth to ninth grades. The sessions judge observed the lower court had acted prematurely by accepting the accused’s statement at face value. “If the magistrate would have been given the opportunity to the IO then he would have produced the recording of the statement of accused which is uploaded on e-Sakshya App.“In 2024, Sodha was also booked in the murder case of MCOCA accused Chirag Loke. Loke was fatally attacked with iron rods in Nerul by four me on Feb 13, 2024.
