NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has applauded the presentation made by Chhattisgarh government lawyer before it in a criminal case and said that the note submitted by him is an illustration of how a case be presented on behalf of the state.
A bench of Justices U U Lalit, Vineet Saran and S Ravindra Bhat was all praise for advocate Sumeer Sodhi, standing counsel of Chhattisgarh government and suggested that the note submitted by him may be taken as the standard format by all counsel appearing for various state governments in the top court.
Sodhi had submitted a convenience note in tabular form giving a brief summary of the entire case, accused persons, deposition of witnesses and legal submissions on behalf of the state government.
The top court which copied the entire note in its order, directed the registry to circulate copies of the order to all the Standing Counsel for the States.
"In the end, we must observe that the presentation made by Sumeer Sodhi in the note extracted above is an illustration of how a case can be presented on behalf of the State", the bench said.
It said, "We may suggest that said note may be taken as the standard format by all the learned counsel appearing for various State Governments in this court".
The top court order came while hearing an appeal filed against the Chhattisgarh High Court order confirming the conviction and sentence including life imprisonment awarded to 16 accused in the murder case.
"With the assistance of the learned counsel, we have gone through the record and are satisfied that the role attributed to the present appellants was not in any way different from that attributed to the other four acquitted accused," the bench said, while allowing the appeal and acquitting three persons in the case.