False Terror Cases: Harsh to Say Police Driven by Religious Bias

Unfair to say that the police are driven by bias in terror cases against a particular community, writes RK Raghavan

(With Hyderabad court acquitting all the ten accused in the Hyderabad blast case of 2005, The Quint revisits the debate on whether the state is liable for compensation for falsely implicating the innocent in terror-related cases. This article was first published on 17 February 2017.)

The focus of criminologists – both academicians and practitioners – until half a century ago had been solely on penology and how to bring down crime through penalties. The near consensus was that punishment alone could alter deviance.The dissent was solely on how deterrent should penalties be. Refreshingly, in the past few decades, attention has shifted partly to the plight of victims of crime and on how to compensate them for the trauma suffered by them.

Legal changes have also been effected to promote victims’ rights. The only regret has been that the judiciary has not made more liberal use of these provisions of law to make amends for any instance of criminal misconduct. One does not yet witness any change in the outlook of many judicial officers. This is the fault of the judiciary rather than of lawmakers.

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