A bench of Justices KM Joseph and BV Nagarathna issued notice on the plea filed by the Indian Muslims for Progress and Reforms, through advocate Rizwan Ahmad.
The petitioner-organisation submitted that the current approach of State governments towards ex-gratia compensation for victims of hate crimes and mob lynching is ‘whimsical, discriminatory and arbitrary’, ‘meagre’ and has ‘glaring discrepancies’.
“The approach of State Government’s … in most cases depend on extraneous factors like media coverage, political imperatives and the victim’s religious identity … such an action by the governments is not only the violation of the equality before law (Article 14) but also a breach of Article 15 which mandates non-discrimination against any citizen,” the plea said.
Such incidents have a significant bearing on the rule of law, it was contended while flagging recent incidents of heinous crimes against minorities.
Source: Barandbench
