A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court highlighting need for the government to frame guidelines for compensating victims of wrongful prosecution by the police or authorities.
“Surprisingly, India, with a population of around 1.5 billion, has no effective statutory/legal Mechanism for the wrongful prosecutions due to police and prosecutorial misconduct resulting in a pandemic of false cases which has not only destroyed the social fabric of the nation but also affected the over-burdened judiciary with alarming pendency of over 40 million cases,” a writ petition filed by Supreme Court advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay said.
The government had not bothered to implement the recommendations made by the Law Commission of India in its 277th report on the miscarriage of justice in 2018, it stated.
The Commission had prepared the report on the basis of a Delhi High Court order in the Babloo Chauhan case in November 2017 to undertake a “undertake a comprehensive examination of issue of relief and rehabilitation to victims of wrongful prosecution and incarceration”.
Mr. Upadhyay urged that, being custodian of the Constitution and protector of the right to life, liberty and dignity, the apex court “may use its plenary constitutional power to frame the guidelines for compensation to victims of wrongful prosecutions”.
The petition said innocents fell victim to the malice of the authorities who used the criminal justice system to settle scores. “Due to no fear of being prosecuted by courts and growing tendency to frame innocents for ulterior motives there has been unprecedented surge in filing of false cases.”
