Lower courts told to avoid use of unfamiliar abbreviations

A division bench while going through an order of a special judge in Puducherry extending remand of an accused, said “The special Judge had passed the following order: ‘Acc. Pro. R.E. Till 18/07/14’. We find it difficult to understand this telegraphic abbreviation in the order of the Special Judge. But R Muthukumarasamy standing counsel for HC explained the abbreviations and we also infer that ‘Acc’ means ‘Accused’, ‘Pro’ means ‘Produced’ and ‘R.E.’ means ‘Remand Extended’.” 

“This practice of the Courts using unfamiliar abbreviations needs to be necessarily deprecated”, the bench held and noted that “We only expect that the judicial officers in this State and in the Union territory of Puducherry shall not here after use these kinds of abbreviations understandable only to the maker of the abbreviations.” 

However, as regards the case which pertained to the release of six accused held by the NIA, the bench held that “Though the detention of the detunes between July 2014 to September 2014 was not by means of any valid order of remand, their subsequent production before the special Court, led to valid orders of remand being passed. Hence, the detention as of now, cannot be stated to be illegal and so they cannot be set at liberty.”