Senior Advocate Rebecca John, appearing for Maliwal before the High Court, said that the people appointed to the DCW included lawyers with experience in monitoring rape trials. Further, the appointments were on a short-term contractual basis, and it was not the prosecution’s case that the appointees had not worked and only collected salaries.
It was pointed out that the complainant was a former Chairperson of the DCW, who belonged to a different party.
John stated that the allegations of the DCW’s budget being sanctioned in one go as against installments had not been pressed in the chargesheet. Further, the number of alleged illegal appointments in the same had been brought down from 87 to 20.
Pertinently, it was argued that the respondents had not seized the AAP’s membership register as part of its probe.
The prosecution had only relied on hearsay evidence based on the cross-examination of a constable to show alleged association of the appointees with the party, it was stressed.
Source: Barandbench
