Supreme court asks state to compensate victims of gau rakshaks

Taking a stern view on the rising instances of cow vigilantism, the Supreme Court on Friday said that states were obliged to compensate the victims of such crimes and asked all of them to file a report on the compliance of its order by appointing a nodal officer to prevent violence by such vigilante groups. “Victims are to be compensated. It is obligatory on the part of the state to compensate the victim of crime,” said the bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice DY Chandrachud.

Under the Code of Criminal Procedure, the state is under obligation to have a scheme for victim compensation it added. Senior counsel Indira Jaising, appearing for Tushar Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, had urged the apex court to order compensation to the victims of violence by the vigilante groups. Jaising maintained that she was not asking for the formulation of a new scheme and just seeking the enforcement of the existing scheme in the case of the victims of cow vigilantism, referring to the case of Junaid (in pic), who was beaten up and stabbed in a moving train between Delhi and Ballabgarh.

She also said that there should be a National Policy for the Prevention of Crime. The next hearing of the matter is on October 31. Senior counsel Kapil Sibal, also appearing for one of the petitioners, told the court that while the perpetrator of violence in the name of protecting cows were on bail, the victims faced FIRs and persecution. “There are several FIRs lodged in cases involving violence by cow vigilante groups and nothing has happened in any case,” he told the bench. In the last hearing of the matter on September 6, the top court had said that cow vigilantism has to stop and directed states/union territories to appoint district nodal officers to take steps to prevent and act against perpetrators of such violence.