New Delhi: Should individuals who have spent years in prison because of a wrongful conviction receive financial compensation? That’s the question the Supreme Court examined Monday in response to a plea stemming from the cases of three former convicts who were wrongfully incarcerated before being exonerated by the top court.
Acting on a plea filed by NALSAR’s Square Circle Clinic, a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta said it would hear the case on 24 November as it asked the Attorney General and Solicitor General to assist the court on the issue.
The case stemmed from pleas filed by three former convicts from Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, who were exonerated by the Supreme Court and have sought compensation for their wrongful conviction, citing their “clean” acquittals.
Coincidentally, their acquittals were ordered by Justice Nath, who will also hear their pleas for compensation.
Currently, the evolving legal understanding on compensation for wrongful convictions is vague and ad hoc in India. However, courts have granted compensation in certain cases based on their discretion.
In 2018, the Law Commission of India came out with a report that deliberated the mechanism of compensation for “miscarriage of justice” resulting in wrongful prosecution and said that it “remains complex and uncertain”.
The commission laid down certain standards to be applied in cases of “miscarriage of justice” and explained what constitutes wrongful prosecution, the report said. However, it also added that no statutory or legal scheme defines the state’s response to the issue.
On the other hand, other countries like the UK, the US, Canada, Germany, Australia and New Zealand provide compensation for wrongful incarcerations.
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United Kingdom
As a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and under its domestic laws, like the Criminal Justice Act 1988, the UK provides compensation to people punished as a result of a wrongful conviction that is later reversed due to a “miscarriage of justice based on new facts that prove a person did not commit an offence.
Certain factors are considered to decide the compensation, such as harm caused to one’s reputation, seriousness of the offence and severity of the punishment.
Before 2011, individuals who were acquitted because the evidence fell short of standards of “beyond reasonable doubt” were excluded from compensation claims. But after 2011, the UK Supreme Court widened the definition of miscarriage of justice and held that those who cannot prove their innocence beyond a reasonable doubt are also entitled to compensation.
Germany
In Germany, the issue of wrongful convictions is the liability of the state under Article 34 of the Constitution.
Besides this, Germany also has a Law on Compensation for Criminal Prosecution Proceedings, 1971, which specifies that anyone who has suffered damage as a result of a criminal conviction, which is later quashed or reduced, shall be compensated by the state.
The law also allows such claims for unlawful pretrial detentions, other unlawful detentions, unlawful searches and seizures.
Loss of earnings due to loss of employment, or losses in a pension insurance policy, along with the cost of a lawyer, are all taken into account while calculating the compensation amount.
United States of America
The US allows individuals unjustly convicted or imprisoned to claim compensation under federal law if the conviction is reversed, they are not found guilty at a new trial or hearing, or pardoned for being innocent. Compensation amount is based on length of incarceration.
Different states also have their own laws for providing compensation, including monetary and non-monetary assistance to victims of wrongful conviction or incarceration.
Some states—such as the District of Columbia, Colorado, California and Alabama—have laid down fixed amounts. Others—such as Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Nebraska and New Hampshire—leave it to the discretion of the appropriate forum to decide the amount on a case-by-case basis.
For instance, a state like Illinois pays over $85,000 for five years of wrongful incarceration or less, while those in prison for more than 14 years can get up to $199,150.
The three cases before the court
The current case is based on three petitions.
One of the petitioners was Kattavellai, also known as Devakar, who was wrongfully incarcerated for 14 years, of which he spent seven years on death row. He argued that his fundamental right to life and liberty, among others, was being violated due to his wrongful conviction, and that the state must compensate him for this violation.
Devakar claimed he was wrongfully arrested in 2011 for the alleged robbery and murder of two individuals and the rape of one. Seven years later, the sessions court convicted him and sentenced him to death. The Madras HC confirmed his death sentence, causing him to make his way to the Supreme Court, which, in 2019, set aside his execution order. While his appeal was still pending before the court, Devakar was placed in solitary confinement.
The trauma of wrongful incarceration, coupled with the growing struggles of his family in his absence, led to a sharp decline in Devakar’s mental health, leading him to attempt suicide twice. Nearly six years after the court paused his death sentence, it cleared him of all charges in July this year, saying that his conviction “had no legs to stand on whatsoever”, and yet he was in custody all these years.
The court said several important witnesses were not examined, and that the arrest and recoveries in the case were based on extra-judicial confessions. The court added that this was a fit case for the grant of compensation while letting him go.
The other pleas were filed by Ramkirat Goud and Sanjay Sumru.
After undergoing 12 years of incarceration, six of which were spent on death row, Goud approached the court seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction, predicated on his “illegal and tainted investigation”, along with his unfair prosecution based on fabricated evidence.
A Thane court convicted Goud of offences like murder, rape, kidnapping and causing the disappearance of evidence, along with offences under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, and handed him a death sentence in 2019.
In 2021, the Bombay High Court confirmed this sentence.
However, when he approached the Supreme Court in 2022, he was acquitted after the court observed that the two witnesses were found to be “created by the Investigating Officers” as a “sensational” case wasn’t being solved. The Supreme Court also noted that the evidence in this case was “totally false and unworthy of credence”.
The court also noted that Goud was illegally arrested in 2014, despite no material in the investigation file to even cast minimal suspicion against the accused.
On 7 May, the Supreme Court, in a landmark judgement, overturned the death sentence of Goud, who had been convicted of the rape and murder of a three-year-old, citing a “shabby and perfunctory investigation” that led to the failure of the prosecution’s case.
The court said that the accused was convicted and sentenced even though there was no reliable evidence on record, leading to his incarceration for almost 12 years, of which six years were under the “Damocles sword of death penalty”.
In the third case, Sumru was acquitted by the Supreme Court in February this year after 19 years in the shadow of death for a crime he did not commit.
He said he spent 13 of the 19 years in the “unbearable agony” of waiting for a decision about his mercy petition, after his initial pleas challenging his conviction and death sentence were rejected by the Supreme Court. In 2004, the sessions court ordered that he be hanged to death for raping and murdering a minor.
Sumru escaped execution largely due to an unforeseen turn of events. His mercy petition was pending before the court for over 13 years before any outcome. The court, while setting aside his conviction, noted that there were no independent witnesses or incriminating forensic evidence in his case.
It also noted the presence of suspicious extra-judicial confessions in this case, saying, “The most pertinent suspicion in the prosecution case is that no single independent witness is adjoined or examined in support of the confession or consequent recovery.”
The court also cast serious doubts on the report produced by the forensic lab in Agra, saying it had “miserably failed to link the accused with the crime” and had failed to substantiate Sumru’s conviction.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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