GENEVA. Over 30 criminal defence lawyers will undertake a training programme in West Bengal, near Kolkata. The training will be co-hosted by International Bridges to Justice (Geneva, Switzerland) and MASUM, a community organizing and legal advocacy group that works to educate and empower local citizens against human rights violations by the state, on 11-12th April 2009, Radisson Forte Hotel, Raichak.
The training workshop is entitled, URGENCY – Importance of Early Access to Counsel by the Accused. It will be facilitated by trainers from International Bridges to Justice, MASUM and Calcutta High Court.
The workshop for 30 lawyers representing clients from West Bengal will be introduced by Abhijit Datta (MASUM) and Sanjeewa Liyanage (IBJ) on the 11 April 2009.
Mr. Jaimalya Bagchi, Sr. Advocate of Calcutta High Court and Justice D.K. Basu are going to attend the training and participate as trainers.
Two training sessions will be organized by Mr. Bagchi. The first one on topics such as “Basic criminal defence skills, duties and responsibilities of a criminal defence lawyer, importance of early access to counsel, skills lawyers should have during early stages of arrests, especially the accused person is under police custody”. And the second training session will focus on “All defences under India Law” (such as self defence, duress, necessity, provocation, false confession, entrapment etc.
A speech from D.K. Basu will cover the theme of urgency and importance of early access to Counsel by the Accused: He will focus on rights of accused persons in police custody, importance of the presence of a lawyer during early stages of arrest, especially during police investigations, challenges in implementing rights of accused persons in police custody and jails and suggestions and recommendations to overcome them.
They will also be a focus on storytelling and exercises examining the past and present state of the criminal justice system in India and plans to improve this criminal system and the rule of law in the country by envisioning them through paintings.
The interest of expanding the training to other regions in India was expressed at the end of the New Delhi 2008 training in order to overcome the need in rural regions. With this training in West Bengal we are starting to move forward in the improvement of the criminal justice system in India.