Special court rejects defence counsel application in Jaya case

A special court today rejected application filed by the defence counsel seeking more time to point out "defects" in the translated evidences of all the 259 witnesses in the trial of the disproportionate assets case against former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa. Rejecting application filed by defence counsel Navaneetha Krishnan on January 27, special court Judge B M Mallikarjunaiah, however, stated that wherever corrections are necessary,
it will be taken into consideration at an appropriate stage. Meanwhile, the judge directed the interpreter K S Harish to "have a look" at the "defects" pointed out by the defence in the translated evidences of 44 witnesses (out of the 259) and compare it with the orginal version (in Tamil) and if any mistakes are found, furnish the "mistakes, omissions" before the court in a week's time. Earlier, when special public prosecutor B V Acharya requested that the case be posted for questioning under 313 CrPC (under which the accused is required to appear before the court), the judge stated it was "not necessary at present" and posted the case to February 8 for further proceedings. On January 27, the defence counsel had submitted that since the prosecution had taken one year to translate the documents from Tamil to English with the help of 25 translators and they would need at least six months to point out the defects and give the correct version of the translated evidences of all the witnesses. This was termed as "higly speculative and [...]