New Delhi, 11 Feb: The Supreme Court has directed its registry to discontinue referring to trial courts as ‘lower courts’. The Supreme Court stated that even trial court records should not be referred to as “lower court records.”
A panel of Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan issued the ruling while hearing a plea filed by two people contesting the Allahabad High Court verdict that dismissed their appeal against conviction and life sentence in a 1981 murder case.
“It would be acceptable if this court’s registry stopped referring to trial courts as ‘lower courts’. Even the trial court record should not be referred to as a lower court record (LCR). Instead, it should be known as the trial court record. The registrar (judicial) should take note of this decision,” the bench stated in its judgment dated February 8. The top court directed its registry to request a soft copy of the case’s trial court record and scheduled a hearing on August 6.
The two petitioners have appealed the high court’s October 2018 judgment, which denied their appeals and ordered them to surrender to the relevant court to complete the balance of their sentence. They had asked the high court to challenge the trial court’s ruling in the case, which had found them guilty and sentenced them to life in prison.
