The Supreme Court recently declined to stay its ruling and asserted that it wanted to protect innocent people from being punished.
A bench of Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel and Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, however, said that compensation can be paid to victims alleged atrocities under The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, even without a FIR being registered.
The court said, “We are not against the law or its implementation" and the directions in no way diluted the law but were aimed to protect the innocent people from being punished. It describes its direction for preliminary inquiry before an FIR is registered on a complaint as “filter.” People who are agitating have not read the order. There is a lot of hearsay.”
Asserting that it has in no way diluted the law to protect the SC/STs, Justice Goel said, “We are only giving effect to existing law. It is not a law of arrest that the moment an FIR is lodged, the accused is arrested” and the “procedure established by law should be fair, just and reasonable.”
Justice Goel further observed, “We are not concerned about what is happening outside this court. Those agitating on streets may not have even read our judgment. Vested interests are also involved some time. We are only concerned about innocent people being put behind bars. We are not against the Act at all. But innocents can't be punished on unilateral version. Why does government want people to be arrested without verification?”
The bench then said, “Our approach is to protect innocent people. If there is an unverifiable allegation against an official, how will he function, how AG will function.”
