Justice Tirthankar Ghosh of Calcutta High Court expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of the postmortem reports reaching the court. The judge aired his view at a programme at the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) in Salt Lake on Sunday.

“When we are asking autopsy surgeons to conduct a repeat postmortem on the same body, we are getting two different reports. One says there are injuries, the other says there are none. The justifications given by the autopsy surgeons are not satisfactory. The foundational reasons are diametrically opposite. If there are two postmortem reports, it is not the duty of the court to choose which is correct. Then that lays out a third avenue for an interpretation when an investigation outcome is already there. That changes the nature and character of the chargesheet. That is not acceptable in law,” Justice Ghosh pointed out.

Another issue he raised was the negative consequences of the proliferation of the internet concerning cybercrime. “None of the professions were equipped to hedge so far as banking transactions were concerned. And with social networking sites coming in, embarrassing content is being circulated, particularly dealing with the relationships of people of tender age. This may not be acceptable once the relationship is snapped. There is the question of consent. When it is being circulated, it is to the embarrassment of one of the parties who had been in an intimate relationship. My agony is that investigating agencies are unable to stall that circulation,” he said.

The judge was attending the inauguration of a two-year post-graduate course on criminology and criminal justice at NUJS. Also in attendance were Justice Sugata Majumdar and Justice Ananya Banerjee, NUJS vice-chancellor Nirmal Kanti Chakrabarti, director-general and inspector-general, cyber crime wing of West Bengal Police, Sanjay Singh and Manoj Kumar Roy, Probation Officer.

The course is open to all graduates and applications will be accepted till August 28.