Hostile Witnesses, Judicial Interactions and Out-of-Court Narratives in a District Court of North India

Daniela Berti (1)

1 Milieux, sociétés et cultures en Himalaya

In spite of the success encountered in India by the court system of justice –a system that India initially inherited from the British– the resort to the court for conflict resolution may sometimes simply corresponds to a choice which the parties make in the first place, but which might eventually be abandoned in favour of other non official forms of compromise or adjustment. Even in serious criminal cases where the State acts as plaintiff, it often happens that prosecutor witnesses, who initially testify against the accused when the case is registered by the police, deny or strongly tone down their accusations, when questioned by the judge.
By referring to a specific court case I followed during fieldwork in a District court of North India, this contribution aims at analysing how the witnesses' denial of any previous statement takes form inside an Indian court, the kind of interaction this corresponds to during the trial and the kind of narrative it is associated with. This will lead me to spell out the roles that each participant –the judge, the prosecutor, the lawyers and witnesses- plays during the trial, to follow their verbal exchanges, and to see how these exchanges are transformed when they are recorded in written form, into what will become the official version of the trial. I will also compare the way in which the case is tried inside the court with the way it is understood by the protagonists outside the courtroom.

Mots clés: trial court; criminal proceedings; judicial system; India

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Daniela Berti. Hostile Witnesses, Judicial Interactions and Out-of-Court Narratives in a District Court of North India. 2009. ⟨halshs-00413747v1⟩