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The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice in the plea seeking directions to the Centre for formulation of Guidelines for purposes of granting Compensation to Victims of Wrongful Prosecution and to implement the recommendations of Law Commission Report No-277 on Miscarriage of Justice ("Law Commission Report").

The PIL has been filed by Advocate and BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay and was taken up by a bench headed by Justice UU Lalit.

Senior Adv. Ajay Hansaria appears for the Petitioner(s).

“There has been a spurt in false cases. Wrongful prosecution and incarceration of innocent persons with no effective statutory and legal mechanism available to the innocent persons to address the same, is causing “miscarriage of justice” and has created a Black-Hole in the criminal jurisprudence of our Country" the plea by Advocate and Activist Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay states. 

The top court also tagged another petition by Kapil Mishra seeking compensation for Rape accused Vishnu Tiwari who was acquitted by the Allahabad High Court after serving a sentence for two decades withe Upadhyay's plea..

Both Upadhyay and Mishra have stressed upon the recent acquittal of Vishnu Tiwari after serving a sentence of 20 years. He was imprisoned in 2001 after being booked under the SC/ST Act by a Trial Court under false rape charges. In January 2021, Allahabad High Court in January 2021 set aside the conviction expressing anguish over the sorry state of affairs that contributed to the man's prolonged imprisonment, including the government's failure to recommend his case for remission of sentence or to commute the sentence under Sections 432-434 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).

The plea by Upadhyay further draws corollaries on awarding of compensation & ignorance of public law in the recent judgment of the Division Bench of Allahabad High Court, which declared Mr. Vishnu Tiwari arrested on 16.09.2000 after being booked for rape & atrocities under SC/ST Act innocent after being in jail for 20 years has given rise to the present PIL. 

Grounds 

• The absence of any effective statutory & legal scheme for providing a mandatory compensatory scheme to victims of wrongful malicious prosecutions and incarceration of innocents infringes fundamental rights guaranteed under Article 14 and 21 of the Constitution & there is a dire need for enactment of specific guidelines for compensation to victims of wrongful prosecution due to police & prosecutorial conduct. 
• False cases led to suicides of innocents who are victims of police and prosecutorial misconduct, who lose hope and lives of their families destroyed after years of delayed trials due to the non-effective machinery, which only gets aggravated by denial/reluctance of taking penal actions routinely by the Courts against the misconduct of investigating officers and vexatious complainants, mostly under the guile of absence of malice and defense of mistake done in good faith which leads to "miscarriage of justice."
• The State's responsibility is to repair the damage caused to the citizens due to their tortious acts by granting adequate monetary and non-monetary compensation.
• Subordinate Courts rarely note that Defense of Sovereign Immunity isn't available against constitutional remedy while granting compensation. 
• The expression 'falsely charges any person' as used in S.211 IPC means a false accusation & there is no necessity of a false accusation being made in connection with a criminal proceeding. The offenses described in the Chapter IX and XI– public servants disobeying the law, framing incorrect documents, giving false evidence, fabricating false evidence, falsely charging a person of an offense under wrongful investigations, prosecutions, proceedings are concerned areas. 

The petitioner has placed reliance on the Delhi High Court judgment in Babloo Chauhan v. State Government of NCT of Delhi, [247 (2018) DLT 31] in which the Court was dealing with an appeal on the issue of fine, awarding default sentences without reasoning & suspension of sentences during the pendency of the appeal, the petitioner in the plea submits that on 30.11.2017, the High Court directed the Law Commission of India to undertake a comprehensive examination of the issue of relief and rehabilitation to victims of wrongful prosecution and incarceration and the Law Commission submitted its Report No.277 on 30.8.2018. Still, the Centre has not taken appropriate steps to implement the recommendations. 

The plea also states that the need of the hour is to have a set of specific guidelines to be followed by the States & its agencies to prevent police & prosecutorial misconduct. It has also been stated that “Lives of innocents who are falsely implicated & then acquitted after years of turmoil in the guise of prosecution not being proved beyond doubt is rampantly destroyed as they are never served justice due to disdainful approach of State which is a factor for pendency of over 40 million cases.”