On 6 March 2020, a court in Surat acquitted 127 men of all charges of terrorism. The acquittal freed 122 of these men after 20 years of incarceration. But the remaining five couldn’t breathe the same air of freedom.
They had died during the trial.
They died as accused, spending the last years of their lives tagged as terrorists, tags that were untrue. That they were exonerated posthumously means little.
These 127 men are not the first or the last victims of what is colloquially called ‘miscarriage of justice’. On 26 July 2019, Ali Mohammad Bhat, a Kashmiri weaver, was acquitted in the Lajpat Nagar blasts case after surviving prison for 23 years. Vishnu Tiwari, who was just 23 when he was sentenced to life on a rape charge, was acquitted on 2 March 2020 by the Allahabad High Court. He was 43 when he emerged from prison.
The list of persons failed by the criminal justice system is long, with most names remaining anonymous. While some are able to get compensation from the court, others are denied—but all are irreparably harmed. Interviews conducted with 10 persons in Delhi still awaiting compensation the state owes to them for wrongful prosecution reveal that suffering of the soul doesn’t come with a price tag. Their narratives force us to think and rethink ‘compensation’ for the miscarriage of justice.