The victim of a hate crime in Uttar Pradesh has moved the Apex Court to demand compensation for victims of hate crimes & seek punitive action against police personnel who refused to register a case & instead put pressure on the victim to withdraw complaint.
The plea filed by 62-year-old Kazeem Ahmed Sherwani, a resident of Delhi’s Zakir Nagar alleged that on July 4, while waiting for an Aligarh-bound bus at Noida Section 37, he was offered a free ride by a group of men who abused, harassed & tortured him in the car they were travelling in due to his Muslim identity. When he went with a complaint to the nearby police station in Noida, no complaint was registered as the police dissuaded him from pursuing the case.
The plea also sought damages for the alleged police misconduct & demanded a victim compensation scheme for persons affected by incidents of similar hate crimes.
On Friday, a bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar & CT Ravikumar allowed a copy of the petition to be served to the counsel for state of Uttar Pradesh & directed the matter to be heard along with petitions raising similar issues of guidelines against hate speech that is listed before the Chief Justice of India (CJI) on Dec 3.
The petitioner was represented by senior advocate Huzefa Ahmadi who informed the Court about the plight of the petitioner.
“If hate crimes are permitted to occur with impunity, & without prompt legal action, the promise of the Constitution makers will be broken,” the petition filed through advocate Talha Abdul Rehman said.
“This is not a lone case, but one of several cases where similar hate crimes, including public beatings & lynching, have taken place across several states, but where victims have been discouraged , without even a preliminary investigation, to frame the offence as a ‘hate crime, & the police have discouraged them from filing FIRs,” the plea added.
The petitioner urged the Court for a fair & impartial investigation into his complaint & demanded that the Delhi Police provide him with security as on many instances in the past, the Uttar Pradesh police had harassed him for pursuing the complaint. After the UP police refused to register his complaint, the petitioner approached the national human rights commission (NHRC), following which he was asked by the police to submit his complaint. He gave a written complaint to the Noida police on July 31. They noted his complaint but suggested he was “politicizing” a non-issue, the plea said.
The petition cited a 2018 judgment of the SC in the Tehseen Poonawala case where the top court laid down guidelines for dealing with instances of mob lynching & hate crimes. The petitioner demanded that the UP Police should submit an action taken report on his complaint in compliance with the 2018 decision which placed a “duty of care” on police. Further, he asked for damages & punitive action against the police personnel who refused to act in accordance with the 2018 judgment.
“The petitioner was attacked because of his beard, & ostensible Muslim identity. The incident of that day has left the petitioner & his family completely traumatized, because it attacked their very identity as equal citizens of this country,” the plea said. The attack, according to him, besides harming the fundamental right to equality (Article 14) & liberty (Article 21), also violated the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion under Article 25, it added.
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