Justice A Raman passed the order on revision petitions filed by the AIADMK Supremo's close friend Sasikala Natrajan and her sister-in-law J Ilavarasi, seeking to set aside orders of special courts dismissing their applications to furnish them copies of all documents, records, statements and final reports pertaining to cases against them in Tamil.

The judge directed the lower courts to comply with the request of the accused for providing the translated versions of all documents within a reasonable period of time. The order is likely to delay the trial of corruption cases during AIADMK rule between May 1991 and April 1996 involving Jayalalitha, some of her ministerial colleagues, some IAS officials, Sasikala and others by threespecial courts, set up by the Tamil Nadu government.

The judge stated that law did not, however, specify that translated copies had to be furnished where the accused were not conversant with the language in which the documents were transcribed nor did it prohibit furnishing of documents in the language known to the accused.

Rejecting the objection raised by prosecution against granting copies in Tamil as not being tenable in law, Justice Raman observed that the intention behind the request for the translation was not to rely upon them for the purpose of defence or confronting witnesses, but to understand the case and to formulate their defence more effectively.

On the contention by the prosecution that translation of several thousands of pages would involve a huge expenditure to the exchequer, besides posing some practical problems to the courts, the judge, however, held that the legitimate right of an accused, which was armoured by natural justice, could not be repressed for these reasons.

The judgeheld that the rigid and ``somewhat'' unjust stand taken by the State government on the question of providing translated versions of documents had only allowed the matter to be protracted further.