N’dranou explains reason for adjournments

POLICE normally ask the court to adjourn cases on “necessary” grounds, NCD Metropolitan Superintendent Perou N’dranou says.
He was reacting to concerns raised by judges over the continuing accumulation of cases caused by adjournments sought by prosecutors because they had not completed their files.
This week, Lae National Court judge Justice Fraser Pitpit advised State lawyers to speed up cases and not to continue asking for adjournments, so that the “backlog” could be cleared.
N’dranou said in the case of police, they only asked for adjournments if they needed more witnesses, resources and logistics, and evidence to properly prosecute cases.
“When it comes to a case that requires witnesses and related evidence, they are not always available. So we try our very best to get the evidence in time.”
N’dranou welcomed the three-month grace period allowed by the courts to complete investigations.
“But then again if there is no evidence, what do we do? So it goes back to the whole lot of the people that are involved in the process,” he said.
“Victims, their relatives, friends, and the public need to support us with information and evidence.”
N’dranou used as an example the case of Fred Konga who was shot dead but police did not pursue the case because people refused to come forward with information.
“Then there is the part of the government to assist us with logistics support and resources. We need enough vehicles to go out and bring in witnesses and look for evidence,” he said.
“Those are some of the challenges we face. It is not a straight forward thing to just convict a person. We need facts to do that and they are not always available.
“We need to really work hard to gain that information and sometimes many of those cases are unresolved because of that.”