"Let Individuals Come" : Supreme Court Dismisses NGO's PIL Seeking General Directions Against Wrongful Prosecution

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition filed for framing of guidelines and/or directions against malicious, wrongful prosecution and incarceration of innocent persons. The matter was heard by a bench comprising Chief Justice UU Lalit and Justice Hemant Gupta.

At the outset, CJI Lalit remarked that the petition consisted of "sweeping prayers" and that a better course would be for individual instances of wrongful prosecution and incarceration to come before the court. Accordingly, the writ petition was deemed as "misconceived" and dismissed.

The petition had prayed for a set of specific guidelines or directions to all Subordinate Courts against wrongful malicious prosecutions and incarcerations of innocents by police or Investigating Authorities and prosecutorial misconduct along with vexatious complainants. As per the petition, such prosecutions infringed fundamental rights under Article 14 (Right to Equality), Article 15 (Right to Freedom) and Right of Human Dignity under Article 21. Further, the petition prayed for the Union and State Authorities to establish a time-bound roadmap with fund allocation for advanced scientific institutes, DNA Testing laboratories etc. so that investigating agencies and officers could be adequately trained for appreciation of evidences. The petition also sought for the term "victim" defined under Section "2(wa)" and in Section 357 of the Criminal Procedure Code to be interpreted as a person "who has been acquitted and victim of wrongful malicious prosecution / incarceration". 

The petition, relying upon the National Crime Records Bureau's (NCRB) annual statistical report– "Prison Statistics India" (PSI), 2015, stated that–

"There were 4,19,623 prisoners across the country out of which, 67.2% i.e. 2,82,076 were undertrials (i.e. people who have been committed to judicial custody pending investigation or trial by a competent authority); substantially higher than the convict population i.e. 1,34,168 (32.0%). A review of the data in PSI shows that across the country as well as in States, undertrial prisoners continue to be higher in numbers than the convict population...The data shows that 25.1% (70,616) of the total under trials spent more than a year in prison; 17.8% (50,176) spend up to 1 year in prison as under trials, 21.9% (61,886) of the under trials were in prison for 3 to 6 months, and 35.2% (99,398) under trials spent up to 3 months in prison."

The petition also stated that as per the 2018 report of the NCRB, more than 1 lakh cases under Section 498A of the IPC were reported in India in 2018. While referring to Section 498A as "one of the most grossly misused sections of the India Penal Code", the petition stated that cases under the said Section made up for 27.3% of all the cases of crime against women reported in 2018. It stated that–

"This provision has been always been in the news with allegations of false complaints and very low conviction rate. In the span of thirteen years between 2004-2016, the number of pending cases under 498A have more than doubled and increased by 161%."

The court remained unconvinced by the submissions made in the petition and dismissed it.

CASE TITLE: Fight For Justice Foundation & Anr v UoI W.P.(C) No. 1107/2021

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