[BREAKING] Supreme Court agrees to examine plea by BJP leaders for guidelines to compensate victims of wrongful prosecution

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought the response of the Central government on petitions filed by two BJP leaders seeking compensation for victims of wrongful prosecution.

The petitions filed by Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay and Kapil Mishra cited the example of a rape accused, Vishnu Tiwari who was recently acquitted by the Allahabad High Court after spending 20 years in prison.

The petitioners sought guidelines and mechanism to take strict action and to prosecute fake complainants and a framework to pay adequate compensation to victims of wrongful prosecution.

When the matter came up for hearing on Tuesday, a Bench headed by Justice UU Lalit initially remarked that the current mechanism under criminal law is sufficient to deal with the issues raised by the petitioners.

The Bench after a lengthy discussion then agreed that for the time being, it will examine only the prayer to frame guidelines to grant compensation to victims of wrongful compensation.

Hence, notice was issued to Union Home Ministry and Union Law Ministry.

Senior Advocate Vijay Hansaria and advocate Arijit Prasad represented the petitioners.

Tiwari, who lived along with his father and two brothers in a village in Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh, was booked for rape and for offences under SC/ST Act in 2000 after a woman from SC community accused Tiwari of sexually assaulting her.

Soon after, a trial court found him guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

The 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 High Court said that the testimony of the prosecutrix was found not to be that of a sterling witness and the medical evidence on evaluation belied any case against the accused/ appellant.

Kapil Mishra in his plea highlighted the case to contend that false cases led to suicides of innocents who are victims of police and prosecutorial misconduct.

Lives of their families are destroyed after years of delayed trial due to the non-effective machinery which only gets aggravated by denial/reluctance to take penal action against misconduct of investigating officers and vexatious complainants, Mishra submitted.