Officials at the high court said Justice Patil had gone to Goa on an assignment and that they had no idea when he would return. The Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights,one of the petitioners that would rather wait for Judge Patil to come back, than let some other high court judge take a look at the report, says the new judge would mean starting from the scratch again. A Sebastian, CPDR's lawyer said. However, the respondents including the counsel for the city police beg to differ. Since the police counsel, Advocate Harshad Ponda was away, his son, Aabad Ponda, also a lawyer, spoke to Express Newsline.
Any judge can see the report.
We trust all judges and any judge can go through the report,'' he said. Meanwhile, eight months of probe and now the wait for Judge Patil has had a crippling effect on Mumbai police's fight against criminals. Soon after the probe was instituted on December 10 last year, Mumbai police had stopped encounters and also disbanded its special teams. This,obviously, gave a fillip to the underworld and the gangsters went on a killing spree logging 68 shootouts including 58 killings. This year so far only five encounters have taken place.