New Delhi: The Delhi Police Commissioner has been directed by a court here to order crime teams of all the districts to take photographs of the scene of crime in landscape mode, instead of just the usual close-up or portrait mode, to help courts analyse the evidence found on the scene.
Additional Sessions Judge Pawan Kumar Jain asked the police chief to "issue necessary directions to all the crime teams of all districts to take some photographs of the place of occurrence in landscape mode also and send the compliance report to this court within four weeks."
While acquitting a man in a murder case and noting the inherent defects in photographs taken by crime team, the judge said, "Generally, crime team takes photographs either in close-up or portrait mode. It never takes the photo of place of occurrence in landscape mode. If some photographs be also taken in landscape mode, it will provide immense help to the courts to appreciate the evidence available on the place of occurrence.
"Simultaneously, such photographs shall also minimise the scope of fabrication and manipulation as done in the present case," he said.
Photographs taken in landscape mode focus on as much of the scene as possible as opposed to portrait mode which focuses on a single object or limited field.
The court made the observations while acquitting a person, Shyano Varghese, of the charge of murdering a woman named Rekha Joy, whose body was recovered from the basement of a building in Old Rajinder Nagar area here on March 14, 2012.
It said the photos taken by the crime team hardly provided requisite assistance to the courts in analysing the evidences found on the place of occurrence.
The police had claimed that they traced the accused based on call details of the victim's phone and also recovered her laptop and debit cards from his house.
However, the court noted that the landlord of the building where the victim's body was found, had deposed he had seen the laptop, ladies handbag and certain documents lying on a table in the basement when the crime team was taking photographs.
The judge noted that none of the photographs showed laptop, documents or handbag lying on a table and these were planted on the accused later and photographs taken in such a manner that they did not depict the true picture of the place of occurrence.
"This shows that the crime team had also not inspected the place of occurrence impartially and fairly to find out the truth and the crime team in collusion with the investigating officers had taken the photographs of only those articles which suited to them.
"Such type of tainted investigation can never help the prosecution to prove the guilt of any offender. This shows the items were kept deliberately beyond the focus of camera just to enable the investigating officer to use the same to create false evidence against the suspect if they fail to collect any other evidence. Otherwise there was no occasion for the police officials to keep the table where belongings of the deceased were lying out of the focus of the camera," the judge said.
He said there were inherent defects in the inspection of place of occurrence conducted by the crime team.
The court was also critical of the "sub-standardised" probe and said police failed to prove the role of the accused or ascertain when the woman was murdered or examine the callers who phoned her prior to her death and also fudged the details of arrests and planted evidence.
Earlier also, photographs taken by the crime team have come in for criticism by courts in various criminal cases with the judges questioning the skills of the photographer and the equipment used by them.
He asked the Police Commissioner to take necessary steps to make the investigation transparent and reliable.
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