MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court ordered that presence of investigating officers in court during criminal appeals is mandatory and that in the case of failure of the same, warrant would be issued against the Investigating Officer (IO) to ensure his or her presence.
The court also criticised the lower court for not understanding the principles of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). A Bench, comprising justices S Vaidyanathan and N Anand Venkatesh, gave the direction while hearing a batch of four criminal appeals filed in 2017 and 2019, challenging separate judgments passed in two connected murders.
The judges noted that both the murders were committed by the same accused over a same transaction consecutively. Therefore, the lower court ought to have framed charges in a single case and conducted the trial.