Haryana: HC dismisses plea for ₹1-crore compensation over Mirchpur violence
In April 2010, following a dispute between Jat men and a Dalit man over a barking dog, a mob of Jats set ablaze 18 Dalit houses. In the inferno, a 70-year-old man named Tarachand and his differently abled teenage daughter, Suman, were burned to death. As many as 254 families of the SC community had to flee the village as a result of the caste-based violence.
The court had disposed of a plea from the villagers in 2024, after announcement of a slew of measures by the state government.
However, this review application seeking rehabilitation of the victims was filed by some victims claiming that rehabilitation is incomplete as they continue to live in in human, unhygienic and unsafe conditions; that there are still 15 victims remaining who have not been allotted plots; and that no employment or any kind of compensation has been given to them.
Taking note of the government's submissions, the court noted that in case of death , a lump sum of ₹15 lakh has been paid to the victim's family and ex-gratia permanent job to their children and government accommodation with gunmen. Similarly, 26 other persons have been provided gunmen. A total of 77 CRPF personnel have been deployed for the protection of the victims/witnesses and a total amount of approx ₹20 crore has been spent on security arrangements, the court observed.
It confronted these facts with the counsels of petitioners, who continued to maintain that the same are incorrect. '..despite repeated court queries, learned counsel is unable to demonstrate as to how and in what manner the said reports and facts and figures are incorrect,' the court further noted.
'..This court is therefore constrained to observe that the entire exercise appears to have become a commercial enterprise,' the court observed, dismissing the plea.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NDTV
an hour ago
- NDTV
Cop Father Of Man Who Allegedly Killed Dalit Techie In Tamil Nadu Arrested
Chennai: In a major breakthrough in the alleged honour killing of Dalit techie Kavin Selvaganesh, the Tamil Nadu police have arrested sub-inspector Saravanan, the father of the main accused Surjith, who had earlier been arrested for allegedly murdering Kavin for being in a relationship with his sister. This arrest comes amid sustained protests by the victim's family and public outrage over what they see as a premeditated caste-based murder involving police complicity. Kavin, a 23-year-old software engineer from the Scheduled Castes community, was murdered in Tirunelveli district, reportedly by Surjith, who was upset about his sister's relationship with Kavin. The woman is a Siddha doctor belonging to a dominant upper caste in the hierarchy and worked at a local Siddha centre, where the incident unfolded. Surjith, allegedly caught on CCTV taking Kavin away on his bike, was arrested soon after the murder. Police invoked sections of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, charged him for murder, and later slapped the Goonda Act on him. As the investigation progressed, suspicion grew over the role of his parents - both serving police officers - in abetting or orchestrating the crime. Now, sub-inspector Saravanan, Surjith's father, has been arrested for his alleged role in the murder. The case has been transferred to the CB-CID to ensure impartiality, and both Saravanan and his wife had earlier been suspended from duty. However, Kavin's family has refused to accept his body, demanding the arrest of Saravanan's wife, also a sub-inspector, alleging she too was involved. Actor-politician Kamal Haasan condemned the killing, calling for stringent punishment and a united political front to fight casteism. This case has sparked widespread debate in Tamil Nadu on caste, honour crimes, and police accountability. As the CB-CID investigates further, the demand for justice continues to grow louder - not just from Kavin's family, but from citizens and political voices across the state.
The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
Pa. Ranjith seeks separate law to prevent caste-based crimes
Filmmaker Pa. Ranjith on Wednesday criticised the DMK and its allies for what he called 'ignoring the need for a separate law' to deal with caste-based crimes in the State after the brutal murder of Scheduled Caste youth Kavin Selvaganesh, a software engineer and son of school teacher on July 27. He urged the State Government to constitute a special committee comprising of SC activists, retired judge and intellectuals, akin to Retired Justice K. Chandru's committee that studied caste discrimination in schools, be to study and prevent honour killings. In statement, he pointed out that the District Collector has not visited the family of the victim despite being required to do so as per the provisions of the Prevention of Atrocity Act (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes), and rued that the scheduled castes are having to fight for minimum form of justice even at times when media spotlights such atrocities. 'The current DMK government is displaying the same kind of apathy just as the previous government when it comes to handling Dalit-related cases. The law-and-order situation in the State has deteriorated on multiple fronts and the fact that the parents of the accused are police personnel raises serious concerns about how this case will be handled. The Tamil Nadu government must ensure a completely transparent investigation and arrest Surjith's parents without delay,' said Mr. Ranjith. Mr. Ranjith said the State government shouldn't just stop with providing government job to the victims' family but pay special focus to monitor districts where caste-crimes are high. 'Districts like Tirunelveli, Sivagangai, Pudukkottai, and Thoothukudi must be declared as 'atrocity-prone areas' under the provisions of the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act and establish special police stations,' he said.
The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
India's police must get out of Dirty Harry's shadow
Imagine a crime scene, where two detectives arrive. The first person is Sherlock Holmes, who is calm, meticulous and relentlessly logical. He sees what others overlook, asks things that others miss, and lets logic and evidence guide every step. He knows that the truth cannot be extracted by force and that it must be uncovered through careful, patient investigation. The other person is Dirty Harry, gruff, impatient and contemptuous of rules. He does not investigate; he intimidates. He does not gather evidence; he extracts confessions. For him, justice is about speed, not accuracy, even if it leaves behind broken bodies and ruined lives. These are not just fictional characters. They represent two conflicting visions of policing in India. The question is this. In the fight against crime, do we want a Sherlock Holmes or a Dirty Harry in our police stations? A culture of impunity The custodial death of Ajith Kumar, a 27-year-old temple guard, in June, in Tamil Nadu, is a grim reminder of the perils of the Dirty Harry-style of policing. The case (which involved missing jewellery from a car) happened just months after the Tamil Nadu Police Commission had recommended, among other things, a series of reforms to curb custodial torture. According to a 2023 Lok Sabha reply, 687 people had died in police custody across India between 2018-19 and 2022-23, which is an average of two to three deaths every week. The data showed that these States had the highest numbers — Gujarat (81), Maharashtra (80), Madhya Pradesh (50), Bihar (47), Uttar Pradesh (41), West Bengal (40), and Tamil Nadu (36). Official figures conceal more than they reveal. Many custodial deaths are quietly labelled as suicides, accidents, or sudden illnesses. Torture often occurs off the record — beyond lockups and CCTV surveillance. In Ajith Kumar's case, it reportedly happened in police vans, abandoned buildings, a village tank bed, and in a cow shed behind a temple. Custodial violence overwhelmingly targets the daily-wage worker, the migrant, the slum dweller, the Dalit, and the tribal. So, torture is not just bad policing. It is structural injustice that reflects and reinforces the entrenched hierarchies of caste, class and power. Torture persists due to inadequate training especially for the public-facing constabulary that makes up 90% of the police force alongside poor infrastructure, pressure to deliver quick results, and weak institutional oversight. Disciplinary action is rare and criminal convictions rarer still. More troubling is societal tolerance of custodial violence, which normalises the abuse, turning crime into the routine and impunity into unofficial policy. In D.K. Basu (1996), the Supreme Court of India had laid down detailed safeguards against custodial torture. In K.S. Puttaswamy (2017), it reaffirmed dignity and bodily autonomy as fundamental rights. Yet, torture remains rampant. The Law Commission of India's 273rd Report (2017) urged Parliament to enact a standalone anti-torture law, but no such law exists. India has yet to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Torture. In 2025, India was ranked a 'high-risk' country in the Global Torture Index — a searing indictment we can no longer ignore. On research and real world examples The case against torture is not just moral or legal. It is scientific. Torture is often mythologised as a necessary evil — the quick fix when time is short and lives are at stake. Films and television shows often portray a suspect cracking under pressure, revealing the truth just in time. But decades of scientific research and real-world evidence tell a very different story. In Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation (2015), neuroscientist Shane O'Mara explains that torture impairs the brain's prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, the very regions essential for memory and clarity. Victims become disoriented, incoherent, and cognitively impaired; they will say anything, even lie, just to end the pain. Experience bears this out. During the Algerian War (1954-62), French forces used torture extensively, only to find that much of the intelligence gathered from Algerian insurgents was useless or led to dead ends. In 2007, the International Committee of the Red Cross found that detainees from CIA 'black sites' had confessed only to end their suffering, producing false or unusable information. In the United States, the Innocence Project used DNA evidence to overturn over 375 wrongful convictions, many based on coerced confessions. In Ajith Kumar's case, the victim 'confessed' to hiding jewels in a cowshed — not because it was true, but because he wanted the beatings to stop. The CIA's now-infamous 'enhanced interrogation techniques' — waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation — were debunked in the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Report (2014). The 525-page partially redacted summary (from a 6,700-page report), based on classified CIA documents, concluded that these methods failed to yield actionable intelligence against al Qaeda. Worse, the time wasted chasing false leads had diverted attention from actual threats. So, what works? According to a Netflix documentary 'American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden', the vital lead (the courier who led the U.S. to bin Laden) was uncovered through good, old-fashioned detective work — non-coercive intelligence gathering, surveillance, and methodical analysis. After the wrongful conviction of six men in the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings, the U.K. abandoned confession-based policing. It adopted the PEACE model (Preparation and Planning, Engage and Explain, Account, Closure, and Evaluation) that focused on building rapport and trust with a suspect, open-ended questioning, active listening, and video recording of the interviews. This model reduced false confessions, improved conviction accuracy and restored public trust. Countries such as Norway, Canada and New Zealand have adopted it with similar success. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) has endorsed it. Post-9/11, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), a joint initiative of the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Defence, undertook extensive research on interrogation techniques. Its peer-reviewed studies confirmed that non-coercive, rapport-based methods consistently outperformed torture in producing accurate, timely, and actionable intelligence. In Norway, far-right terrorist Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011, was interrogated without threats or coercion. The police's calm, professional approach led to a full confession and valuable insights into extremist networks, demonstrating that even the most heinous crimes do not justify abandoning legal principles. In the U.S., Najibullah Zazi, who plotted the 2009 New York subway bombing, cooperated with the FBI after being treated with respect. His detailed disclosures helped dismantle a wider terror network. Holmes, not Harry The core issue is that this is not a debate about policing. It is a test of our democratic maturity. The law must protect the most vulnerable, not brutalise them. Every custodial beating is not just a wound on the body of a citizen. It is a stain on the soul of the state. India must immediately ratify the UN Convention Against Torture and enact a standalone anti-torture law. All States should embed the PEACE model into police training, and declare zero tolerance for custodial abuse. When Sherlock Holmes's methods succeed in reality — not just in fiction — why should India cling to Dirty Harry's shadow?
