Court extends remand of two Italian marines
Kollam chief judicial magistrate A.K. Gopakumar on Monday extended the remand period of two marines of Italian vessel Enrica Lexie charged with gunning down two Indian fishermen off the Kerala coast in February till April 16. The accused marines are Latorre Massimillano and Salvatore Girone. The marines have been in remand since February 19 when they were arrested and charged with murder of the two fishermen.
Meanwhile, the Kerala high court on Monday criticised the Italian vessel Enrica Lexie for filing a petition before the high court while the jurisdiction of the case was at the Kollam chief judicial magistrate court. The court also extended the stay imposed on the release of the Italian vessel by a day.
When the appeals filed by the family members of the two deceased fishermen against the single bench order directing the state to release the vessel came up for hearing, the court raised suspicion over the maintainability of the plea filed by the Italians seeking release of the vessel.
A division bench comprising acting chief justice Manjula Chellur and Justice V. Chithambaresh opined that we do not want to “unsettle the settled law”. The hierarchy of the courts are supposed to be well followed.
Counsel for the Enrica Lexie, V.J. Mathews, submitted that bond amount can be enhanced and should be permitted to leave the Kochi port.
However, the bench orally observed that the petitioner cannot file a petition before the Kerala high court before filing a petition under Section 457 of the CRPC at the Kollam court. The court observed that since the seizure report is filed before the Kollam court the petition seeking release of the vessel should also be filed before the Kollam magistrate court. The court opined that we can only direct the magistrate court to pass appropriate orders if a petition is filed. The court asked Mr Mathews to submit top court orders which underlines that the high court can consider such applications.
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Five-year defence plan is approved
Age Correspondent
New Delhi, April 2
The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) on Monday cleared the crucial Five-Year Defence Plan (2012-17) that deals with specific requirements and modernisation plans of the armed forces. Major changes in the offset policy were also cleared which “recognises technology transfer as eligible for discharge of offset obligations”, allowing a category of sub-vendors under the main contract to discharge offset obligations on behalf of the main vendor, and giving an extra timeframe of two years beyond the main contract time-period for honouring offset obligations. The 15-year long-term integrated perspective plan (LTIPP) (2012-27) has been described as a “broad vision” document.
The Indian Army wants modernisation of its obsolete air-defence systems since it is currently using air defence guns of Soviet Russian vintage, like the L-70 (single-barrel guns which were acquired in the 1960s), the ZU-23 (twin-barrel guns which were acquired in the 1980s) and the Schilka air defence guns (four barrel guns acquired in the 1970s). It also wants various types of modern artillery guns.
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