Madras HC rebukes queer court acronyms

Flummoxed with queer abbreviations like ‘Acc, Pro & RE’ for words ‘accused, produced and remand extended’, the Madras High Court has said the court orders and the abbreviations used in them must be clear to common people.

“We find it difficult to understand,” remarked a bewildered bench of Justices S Nagamuthu and M Sathyanarayanan after coming across similar abbreviations in a judicial order of a the special judge of an NIA court in Puducherry.

“This practice of using unfamiliar abbreviations needs to be necessarily deprecated,” said the bench, scoffing at the unique acronyms, even as standing counsel R Muthukumarasamy took pains to explain that they stood for expressions like “accused, produced and remand extended”.

Orders passed by the courts should be understandable and legible to common man and the petitioners, the court said. The bench made the remark while hearing a batch of habeas corpus pleas.