LAHORE, April 2: The Lahore High Court’s administration is considering a proposal to employ video link conference (teleconferencing) technology for in-jail trial of the accused involved in high-profile and sensitive cases.

Sources told Dawn on Wednesday that this proposal was being considered to facilitate the judges of the subordinate judiciary trying those accused, whose exposure to public and appearance in courts, could pose threat to law and order. The use of teleconferencing would also lead to speedy disposal of the high-profile cases, as evidence could be recorded expeditiously through computer equipment by courts, they added.

Audio and visual communications could be established between two far placed stations through this technology, which had been proposed to enable the judges and lawyers to record testimony and cross-examination of the under-trial prisoners without affecting their physical movement.

It is learnt that this project was part of the LHC’s prioritised information technology plan for its daily operation. The teleconferencing project would be funded out of the Asian Development Bank’s grant given to the provincial government for the uplift of the judiciary. The LHC chief justice would supervise the project, whose feasibility would be prepared soon, the sources said.

If the plan was approved and duly implemented, this would be the first time in the history of Pakistan’s judiciary that trial proceedings would be held through teleconferencing, which had already been used in the US and the UK.

According to the sources, one of the biggest problems for the subordinate courts was holding the in-jail trial of the accused arrested in high-profile cases because the judges and the lawyers had to travel to jail to conduct proceedings. Besides, the jail authorities had to make extraordinary security arrangements to ensure safety of the involved parties.

Quoting another reason, the sources claimed that delay in the trial of the accused held in sectarian cases had prompted the authorities concerned to resort to it. In some 13 high-profile sectarian cases, implicating more than 50 activists of the banned Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan and other parties, the trial could not be started in the anti-terrorism courts in the Punjab despite filing of challans in 1997.

These cases were adjourned sine die earlier this year because the accused detained in jails of Multan and Bahawalpur after being sentenced to death in other cases could not be transported to the courts under the law. The authorities thought that teleconferencing could be used effectively to conclude these trials, the sources concluded.