HC seeks report on prosecutor's absence in sex tests case

"The government cannot let a matter go to acquittal by such default like non-appearance of the prosecutor. It cannot happen that matters are not being attended to thus creating suspicion in the minds of the citizens," a division bench of Justices S A Bobade and Mridula Bhatkar observed.

Calling for the inquiry report, Justice Bobade said, "All this appears very mysterious. Somebody somewhere is responsible for this default acquittal and we want to know who is to blame for this."

The court was hearing a public interest litigation filed by a social activist Prakash Pise seeking direction to the government to take action against the prosecutor Madhusudan Sadaphule.

The court was today informed by the government that an inquiry was initiated against Sadaphule and the report would be submitted before a committee to decide on further course of action.

The government also said that no cases were being given to Sadaphule since the PIL was filed in court.

"Give us the report. We want to see what happened," Justice Bobade said.

Appearing for the petitioner, advocate V P Patil argued that Sadaphule's non-appearance in the trial led to acquittal of the doctor who was accused of not maintaining proper songoraphy records and was carrying out sex determination tests.

The Solhapur sessions court had in its judgement acquitting the doctor had observed that despite repeated directions, the prosecutor (Sadaphule) failed to appear in court for the trial.

The report has to be submitted on June 28.