New Delhi: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a plea filed by a man incarcerated for 12 years before his acquittal by the apex court in a rape and murder case, seeking compensation for the “wrongful arrest, prosecution and conviction”.
“Issue notice, returnable on November 24. We would request the attorney general or the solicitor general to assist this court in this matter,” a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta said on Monday.
The bench was hearing three separate petitions raising the similar issue.
In one of the matters, the petitioner was on death row for six years after being awarded capital punishment by a trial court in Thane, Maharashtra, in March 2019.
The Bombay High Court in November 2021 upheld the death sentence awarded to him.
However, in May this year, the apex court acquitted him of the charges while noting the “flawed and tainted” investigation.
“The instant case is yet another classic example of shabby and perfunctory investigation leading to failure of the prosecution case involving a gruesome incident of rape and murder of the budding life of a tender young girl aged about 3 years and 9 months,” the top court said in its May verdict.
The man has now approached the top court seeking compensation “on account of his wrongful conviction, predicated on an illegal and tainted investigation and unfair prosecution using fabricated evidence” by which he was convicted for the alleged offences by the trial court in Thane.
“The petitioner had been arrested on October 3, 2013, without any basis, and was finally released on May 19, 2025, after 12 years of wrongful incarceration, six of which he endured on death row,” the plea said.
It said the man, now 41, hails from a village in Uttar Pradesh.
“The petitioner has suffered a grave and severe violation of his fundamental rights guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution, on account of being falsely accused of heinous offences, illegally arrested, being made the subject of an illegal and tainted investigation, unfair prosecution, and suffering 12 years of wrongful incarceration, for which the petitioner ought to be appropriately compensated by the respondent state…,” the plea said.
It added that mere release of the individual from incarceration was not sufficient to correct the wrong faced by him, and the state ought to be directed to pay appropriate compensation to the petitioner for the pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage he suffered for 12 years.
