Victims Of Wrongful Prosecution: PIL In Supreme Court Seeks Formulation Of Guidelines For Granting Compensation

A PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court 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").

“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.

Non 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.”

Reliance was placed to the SC’s judgements in Khatri v. State of Bihar [(1981) 1 SCC 627]; Veena Sethi v. State of Bihar [AIR 1983 SC 339]; Rudal Shah v. State of Bihar [AIR 1983 SC 1086]; Bhim Singh v. State of Jammu and Kashmir [(1985) 4 SCC 677] and Sant Bir v. State of Bihar [AIR 1982 SC 1470] in which the Court has included instances of awarding compensation to those incarcerated wrongfully & observed that compensation can be awarded by Constitutional Courts for violation of fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

It has also been urged in the plea to direct the States to Implement Centre’s Guideline for Compensation to Victims of Wrongful Prosecution & give compensation to innocent people in spirit of the recommendations of Law Commission Report No-277 on Miscarriage of Justice. Further, the petitioner has also prayed before the Top Court to frame guidelines for compensation to victims of wrongful prosecutions & direct the Centre and States to implement them till religious implementation of the recommendations of the Law Commission Report-277 on Miscarriage of Justice.