Shri Jaitley said that it is very important to be clear on the legal position on the entire issue. “There is no provision under Code of Criminal Procedure or the Evidence Act for the opinion of a lawyer or an amicus curiae. Investigation is exclusively a police function and not a lawyer’s function. Police are trained for investigations but a lawyer is not,” he said.
The Leader of the Opposition also added that if after considering the opinion of the amicus curiae, the investigative agency (in this case the SIT) arrives at an opinion then the latters opinion is final.
It was once again social media that took the lead in popularizing Shri Jaitley’s elaborate and legally sound critique. Twitter was abuzz with some top quality Tweets deconstructing the entire SIT report, taking out the important points and sharing it in the cyber world. There were also some top quality blogposts that highlighted the need of both a legal and moral closure in the wake of the organized vilification campaign against Gujarat and its people in the last decade. One writer also brought out the fact that the amicus curiae report was ridden with infirmities and speculations, which should not be the case.
Thus, yet again it was a sound legal brain and an active social media that called the bluff on an issue our mainstream media has been curiously silent about.
