His office was raided by the Delhi Police on Tuesday in connection with an FIR alleging that the lawyer had made a witness to initiate a case of false riots.
A Delhi court on Wednesday stayed the operation of a search warrant issued against Advocate Mahmood Pracha, who is representing some of the accused in the cases related to the riots in the national capital last year.
Mr. Pracha’s office was raided by the Delhi Police on Tuesday in connection with an FIR alleging that the advocate had made a witness to initiate a case of false riots.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Pankaj Sharma, who passed the instructions on an application filed by Mr. Pracha, said, “Until the pendency of this application, the search warrant issued against the applicant is withheld.” The court reserved its order on 12 March on the plea of the advocate who has sought a direction to the police to obtain only relevant information from his hard disk in the presence of a magistrate.
Mr. Pracha said that a soft copy of the material was as good as a hard copy under the Information Technology Act.
“They want to threaten my customers. That is their objective. In cases of major Delhi riots, they say that soft copy is equivalent to hard copy and we will not give hard copy of charge sheet. Here they do not want soft copy.” .
During the arguments, the advocate also argued that it is clear from the video of the riots that his complaint was not false.
“Big issues are involved. The entire judicial system is involved. I am willing to sacrifice myself to save the Constitution. Please protect my clients, the Constitution and the Evidence Act,” he said.
The Delhi Police opposed Mr. Pracha’s plea that it was necessary to confiscate the original hard disk as it must be sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory for examination and the mirror hard disk can be inserted back into his computer.
The application stated that the purpose of obtaining the search warrant was again to threaten, intimidate and intimidate him.
Mr. Pracha’s office was first raided by the Delhi Police on December 24, 2020. Police had claimed that she was searching for the “Outcome Boxes of the firms’ official email IDs” and “reducing data”.
The advocate later moved the court to preserve copies of video footage of the raid conducted by the Delhi Police in his office on 24 December.
A court had directed to preserve the entire video footage of the police raid on the premises of Mr. Pracha.
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