Condemning Union Home Minister Shushilkumar Shinde’s suggestion of setting up review or screening committees to assess the role of minority youths languishing in jails on terror charges without trial, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to intervene and advise the Minister not to direct his attention to only the minorities as his suggestion was against the Constitutional principles and hit the ‘right to equality before law’.
In a letter to the PM, Modi said that Shinde’s suggestion was unprecedented and marked a new low for the country, while adding that the principles at stake were far too valuable to be sacrificed at the altar of political expediency.
Modi said Shinde’s statement could give out a wrong message about the country’s criminal justice system, while also having a demoralising effect on the entire law enforcement machinery.
“Strict and prompt action against erring police officers should be taken where there is malafide arrest of any member of minority community, wrongfully arrested person should not one be released immediately but they should also be suitable compensated and rehabilitated to join the mainstream,” Modi said.
He attributed the Home Minister’s concern as a brazen and callous attempt to woo the minority community and that even the minority community will raise questions on the timing of such statements. He further stated that the police and public order were state subjects with investigation being an integral part of it, and so, any wrongful and malafide arrest of a citizen, irrespective of his caste or community, should get the same redressal.
“A crime is a crime irrespective of the birth marks of the criminal, and that his religious beliefs could not determine the guilt or innocence,” he said adding that the proposed directive of setting up review committees was against the provision of criminal law, which does not provide for any review committee for withdrawal of pending cases where chargesheets have been filed.
“One cannot rule out the possibility of the trials getting delayed due to such illegal action on the part of the State if the courts were to find fault with such interventions made on extraneous considerations. If this were to happen, undertrial prisoners will end up being under incarceration for longer periods; thus achieving exactly the opposite of the purported objective,” said Modi in the letter.
The BJP PM candidate suggested that the Home Minister should find a solution within the constitutional framework, while mentioning that an acceptable solution would be to fast track all terror cases. Modi said that the Home Minister’s public statement, without the backing of reliable data, was highly undesirable.