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Plea in Supreme Court for Wrongful Prosecution

Posted on March 24, 2021 by admin1  26

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A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court highlighting the need for the government to frame guidelines for compensating victims of wrongful prosecution by the police or authorities.

Key Highlights

  • A plea has been filed before the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Centre to frame guidelines for compensation to victims of Wrongful Prosecution and implements the recommendations of Law Commission Report No-277 on Miscarriage of Justice in 2018.
  • It has further urged the Court to use its plenary constitutional power to frame the guidelines for compensation to victims of wrongful prosecutions and direct the Centre and States to implement them till the recommendations of the Law Commission are implemented religiously.
  • The petition has stated that the absence of an effective statutory or 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.
  • 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 “comprehensive examination of the issue of relief and rehabilitation to victims of wrongful prosecution and incarceration”.

Wrongful prosecution

  • They are the cases of miscarriage of justice where procedural misconducts – police or prosecutorial, malicious or negligent – resulted in wrongful prosecution of an innocent person, who was ultimately acquitted, with a court making an observation or recording a finding to that effect.
  •  The underlying sentiment being that such a person should not have been subjected to these proceedings in the first place.

Recommendation of Law commission

The Law Commission of India submitted its report titled ‘Wrongful Prosecution (Miscarriage of Justice): Legal Remedies’ to the Government of India on August 30, 2018.

  • Injustice caused to innocents needs to be redressed within the rights framework and not through ex-gratia by the State.
  • The commission recommended setting up a legal framework to compensate victims prosecuted wrongfully.
  • The commission called for an established legislative process, a transparent, uniform, efficacious, affordable and timely remedy for the loss and harms inflicted on victims on the account of wrongful prosecution”.
  • The Law Commission in its report called for a special court in every district.
 
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