'State Must Compensate': Why I'm Asking for Rs 9 Cr For 9 Years of Incarceration
Abdul Wahid Shaikh was one of the acquitted in the 7/11 Mumbai blasts. He writes about his demand for compensation.
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(Exposing communalism and real stories behind wrongful incarcerations is a key focus area in The Quint's reportage. Become a member and help us do more such stories).
On 12 September 2015, when the iron gates of the prison finally opened and I stepped outside after nine long years, The world had changed in my absence, and so had I. My family stood there, to welcome me into my long lost freedom , but the one person dearest to me—my wife—was not among them. That absence cut through the moment more sharply than the prison walls I had just left behind.
It took me time to come to terms with why she was not there to receive me. After my arrest, she had shouldered the unbearable burden of sustaining our family alone, working in a modest Urdu school to ensure survival.
(The Quint had earlier interviewed Abdul Wahid Shaikh after 12 accused were acquitted by the Bombay High Court in July 2025).
As I stepped into freedom, outside the gates, the struggle that awaited me was harsher than the punishment inside: finding a job, rebuilding my life from scratch, saving for my mother’s, wife and my own medical treatment. Freedom, I realised, meant only that I was free from the confines of prison, not from the clutches of social and economic hardship.
During those nine years, debts had quietly grown around me like chains.
To remain afloat financially had been a relentless battle. For when the sole breadwinner of a family is thrown into prison, the family does not merely lose its provider; he becomes a liability, another mouth to sustain, another life to salvage from the wreckage. To be transformed from the family’s support into a burden—this was the most humiliating punishment of all.
Hence, you must have read I have demanded 9 crore rupees as compensation for my each year of my incarceration, but this demand though just in nature makes it difficult to achieve but I am hopeful I would get through.
India’s failure to legislate where it has already promised justice on the global stage. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 1966—ratified by India in 1979—clearly recognises the right to compensation for wrongful conviction.
Article 14(6) of the ICCPR mandates that when a person’s conviction is reversed on the ground of a miscarriage of justice, the State must compensate them “according to law.” Yet, more than four decades later, India has not enacted any statutory mechanism to give effect to this obligation.
The absence of such a framework means that people like me, who have lost years of their lives to wrongful incarceration, are left to struggle through courts and petitions for even the smallest relief, while the State continues to evade its duty under both international law and constitutional morality.
In Other Countries, Compensation Is a Right
In other democracies, compensation for wrongful incarceration is recognised as a matter of right. The United States, as of 2024, has 38 states along with the federal government providing compensation statutes.
For example, Texas pays $80,000 per year of wrongful incarceration, along with lifetime annuities. In the United Kingdom, the Criminal Justice Act of 1988 empowers the Secretary of State to grant compensation.
In Germany, exonerees are entitled to €75 per day of wrongful imprisonment under the Strafrechtsentschädigungsgesetz (StrEG).
These mechanisms reflect the understanding that liberty once taken can never be restored, but the State must at least attempt to repair the loss.
Indian courts have repeatedly acknowledged that unlawful detention and wrongful incarceration demand compensation. In Rudul Sah v. State of Bihar (1983), the Supreme Court, for the first time, awarded compensation to a man illegally detained for 14 years even after his acquittal.
In Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa (1993) 2 SCC 746, the Court affirmed that monetary compensation is an appropriate remedy under public law for violations of Article 21—the right to life and personal liberty. More recently, in Babloo Chauhan v. State (2017) 14 SCC 222, the Court recognised the glaring absence of a statutory framework for compensating wrongful incarceration and explicitly urged the legislature to intervene.
Yet, despite these judicial reminders, nothing concrete has been enacted. The Protection of Rights of Wrongful Convicts Bill, 2019, which sought to provide a framework for compensating those wrongfully prosecuted or imprisoned, remains just words on paper.
It was never passed into law. Like so many reform proposals, it made for a promising read but yielded no real relief. The result is that India continues to lack any binding mechanism to hold the State accountable for the irreparable damage it inflicts through wrongful incarceration. Nothing of this sort is actually available to the people who need it most.
Even today, the debt accumulated during my years of incarceration causes me unbearable mental pain.
Whatever I could have earned, saved, and invested to build a better life for myself and my loved ones was snatched away. Is it not the responsibility of those who inflicted this injustice to provide some relief?
My most crucial years had already been stolen. With them went the chance to build a career, to secure stability, to buy a home, to give my children the best education, and to provide my ageing mother with dignity. Instead, my family was forced to lease part of our home on a heavy deposit just to pay off debts. Even today, the question of how to return that deposit continues to haunt me.
'My Demand Is To Set a Precedent'
What I am demanding is not extraordinary—especially when compared with the scams in this country that run into thousands of crores. To give the amount I have sought to a law-abiding citizen who has endured what I went through for doing nothing wrong is, in fact, a modest demand. It is also a test of what we truly aspire to be as a nation.
If a law-abiding citizen like me can be imprisoned for years, only to be acquitted later, is that not the fate already suffered by many, and the looming fate of many more if nothing changes?
If the State could destroy a man’s life so completely—snatch away his most basic rights, force his family into poverty, reduce his mother to a patient struggling for breath—then is it not the State’s responsibility to at least acknowledge its wrong? Is it not the State’s duty to tender an apology, and to do what in Hindi we call nuksaan bharpai—to compensate for the irreparable damage inflicted on me, my family, and our very future?
If India wants its citizens to trust the law, it must show that when the State errs, it does not bury its mistakes but acknowledges them and strives to make amends.
If I am compensated, it will not only help me rebuild my shattered life but also restore people’s faith in the rule of law, the judiciary, and investigative agencies.
History offers us a moral compass: one caliph, addressing the clouds, declared, “Rain wherever you may, your benefit will reach my people,” while another vowed that if even a dog died of thirst in his realm, he would be held accountable.
The modern Indian State often aspires to the former but rarely embraces the latter—the humility of accepting responsibility. Acknowledging mistakes, especially at a time when Muslims feel their faith in institutions has been systematically forfeited, would go a long way in reversing that disbelief and in reaffirming that justice in India is not selective but universal.
(Abdul Wahid Shaikh was one of the acquitted in 7/11 Mumbai train blasts. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them).