MUMBAI: The Supreme Court’s order on Monday upholding the constitutional validity of the provision for tapping of telephone of suspects in terror and organized crimes laid down in the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA) which has been earlier struck down by the Bombay High Court, brought jubilation among the police and Home Ministry officials in Maharashtra yesterday.
“The SC order has upheld our stand that to deal sternly with terrorism, the requirement of tapping phones of suspects is absolutely necessary,” said a senior Indian Police Service officer in Mumbai.
A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justices R.V. Raveendran and M.K. Sharma set aside the Bombay High Court verdict striking down Sections 13, 14, 15 and 16 from MCOCA in film financer and diamond tycoon Bharat Shanti Lal Shah’s case. These four sections lay down the procedure for phone tapping of any suspect involved in terror and organized crimes.
Accordingly, the police can make the intercepted communication as valid and independent evidence before the court of law. The apex court restored the invalidated sections.
The Bombay High Court had said the states did not have the powers under the constitution to legislate upon the telephone “interception” issue as the subject was covered under the “federal list.”
However, the apex court allowed the arguments of the Maharashtra government, that under the changed crime scenario, the states could not be “denied” the right to have some “tough” laws to deal with terrorists and crime syndicates.
Justice M.K. Sharma, who pronounced the verdict on behalf of the bench, said where there was a thin line between the “federal list” and the “concurrent list,” on which both the federal and state governments have the right to legislate, the latter could enact laws in the “interest of the society.”
A special court in Mumbai on Oct. 1, 2006, had sentenced Shah to one-year imprisonment on finding him guilty of concealing information from the police to facilitate extortion activities from the underworld crime syndicates.
