In civil cases, orders relating to eviction or staying of encroachment and directions for police protection are communicated by telegraph, while its use is widespread in matters relating to habeas corpus and bail petitions.
“Litigants will suffer irreparably. When telegram services are not available, the entire court order should be communicated through fax. Because of this requirement, the operative portion of any court order cannot be communicated hereafter. Consequently, litigants who get orders in their favour cannot get them implemented immediately. Justice may be defeated,” says M. Radhakrishnan, an advocate.
I think some alternatives will have to be planned for all this...“If somebody sends a telegram, a certified copy will be given along with the receipt. Such documents can be marked as evidence in cases related to illegal detention or preventive detention. There are instances of detenus being released based on a telegram,” says R. Azhagumani, an advocate in Madurai.
Armed forces personnel in high altitude or border areas, too, depend still on telegrams.
M.K. Sikdar, Chief Editor of the Armed Forces Law Journal, points out that when a soldier on leave wishes to extend his leave for an emergency, he has to send a telegram to his camp, which may be situated in a remote area.
So, looks like indeed a web based system.In the 1980s, the service began using the electro-mechanical teleprinter, which had a QWERTY keyboard. This was later upgraded to a web-based system.Today ‘WRU’ (where are you) may be used in text messaging, but the same three letters were used a long time ago to confirm if the telegram had reached the right centre. The other centre would respond using the ‘here is’ key, according to information from the Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Telecom Training Centre.
A. Mundro, who delivers the telegrams, said that he had been at the job for 32 years. He has braved snakes, been bitten by a dog, rung the wrong doorbell in the middle of the night, waded through water and received goodwill when he carried happy news.“Right from the weather to the price of the vegetables at Kothwal Chavadi market, it is the telegram which carried crucial piece of information. Unlike a postman we cannot drop a letter into a post box and leave it at that. When we carried a message of death, people would forget to sign the receipt in their grief. I have been wearing black for the past three days to mourn the ending of the telegraph service,” he said.Over the next two days, for the last time ever, Mundro will get on to his two-wheeler to deliver telegrams.