Pleas For Compensation To Victims Of Wrongful Prosecution | Supreme Court Issues Notice To Centre

The Bench headed by Justice UU Lalit has also tagged another petition filed by BJP leader Kapil Mishra, through his counsel Advocate Ashwani Dubey seeking similar directions in the Vishnu Tiwari case. Mishra has urged the Supreme Court to issue directions to the Centre to make a mechanism to take strict action and prosecute the fake complainants and pay adequate compensation to the victims of wrongful prosecutions.

Both petitions were filed after the unfortunate 20-year jail tenure of falsely accused Vishnu Tiwari came to light. Tiwari was a rape accused who was recently acquitted by Allahabad High Court after spending two decades in jail.

As per Upadhyay’s plea, the absence of effective statutory or legal scheme for providing 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.

He also pointed out that filing of false cases often leads to suicides of innocents, who are made victims of police and prosecutorial misconduct.

Submitting further, he urged that the Centre cannot shy away from its obligation to safeguard and protect the right to life, liberty and dignity to every citizen. Therefore, it is for the Centre to evolve suitable statutory and legal mechanism to address and safeguard citizen rights guaranteed under Article 21 against wrongful prosecutions and incarceration of innocents by addressing the miscarriage of justice by suitable amendments in the IPC and CrPC on utmost priority.

Further as reported by Livelaw, according to the petitioner, till the amendments are done, it is the need of hour to have a specific guidelines and for the State and its agencies to prevent such police and prosecutorial misconduct which is rampantly destroying lives of innocents who are falsely implicated and then acquitted after years of turmoil in the guise of “prosecution could not prove beyond doubt” and never served justice due to disdainful approach of State which is a factor for pendency of over 40 million cases.

Mishra also emphasized that the law is being misused and abused by filing of fake and malicious complaints.

He vented that no action is taken against fake complainants in the absence of an effective statutory/legal scheme for providing mandatory compensatory relief to victims of wrongful production.

He also demanded that a mechanism should be put in place for speedy disposal of the cases pertaining to the under-trial prisoners, who are prosecuted in special acts and that, guidelines be framed for the under-trial prisoners to decide their cases in a time-bound manner.

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