India, Sept. 1 -- In a move straight out of a courtroom whodunnit, the Supreme Court has ordered the seizure of the notebook of a high court judge's stenographer to pin down the real date on which an anticipatory bail order was typed and uploaded. The top court said only a "discreet inquiry" into the stenographer's record and the National Informatics Centre's (NIC) logs could reveal when the order was actually written, corrected and made public, and whether it was, in fact, backdated.

A bench of justices JK Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi passed the unusual directive while hearing a special leave petition filed on August 16 against a Punjab and Haryana High Court order rejecting anticipatory bail. The petitioner had approached the top court...