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SC to govt: Verify reports of attacks on Christians
The petitioners have claimed that based on media reports and verification with victims, 505 attacks against Christians were reported in 2021 while 250 such incidents have been reported till May 2022.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Union government to verify allegations of attacks on members of Christian community, and asked eight states with the maximum number of such cases to submit a report within two months on the action taken on each complaint.
“This court has not formed an opinion on the veracity of the allegations made by the petition filed under Article 32 of the Constitution,” said a bench of justices Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud and Hima Kohli. “Let there be a verification that will separate the grain from the chaff.”
The court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Peter Machado, the archbishop of Bengaluru, and two Christian organisations, National Solidarity Forum and Evangelical Fellowship of India. The petitioners have claimed that based on media reports and verification with victims, 505 attacks against Christians were reported in 2021 while 250 such incidents have been reported till May 2022.
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Based on data gathered by the petitioners, the top court selected Uttar Pradesh (with 129 reported attacks on Christians in 2021, as per the petitioners), Chhattisgarh (74), Madhya Pradesh (66), Karnataka (48), Haryana (34), Bihar (29), Jharkhand (23) and Odisha (22). The petitioners did not present a similar break-up for attacks during 2022. According to the PIL, attacks included demolition of churches, murder, forced conversions, physical violence, arrests of pastors, defacement of church properties, Bible burning, hate campaign, boycott of the community, stalling prayer meetings and services, and gender violence.
On August 16, the Centre dismissed these allegations in an affidavit filed before the court. The ministry of home affairs either denied the incidents or claimed the complaints involved two individuals which were unnecessarily being given a communal colour. The Centre went to the extent to suggest that the petition was filed with a “hidden oblique motive” to create unrest throughout the country and to possibly “get assistance from outside the country to meddle with the internal affairs of our nation.”
The bench, however, noted that the Supreme Court in the Tehseen Poonawala case judgment in 2018 directed all states and Union territories to have a mechanism in place for taking preventive, punitive and remedial steps to tackle instances of mob lynching. Similar directions were issued by the top court the same year in the Shakti Vahini case while trying to stop khap panchayats from carrying out extra-constitutional methods for punishing individuals.
Referring to these cases, the bench said, “The above exercise of verification is being conducted to enable this court to discern whether the directions issued by us in the Tehseen Poonawala case, the Shakti Vahini case and the Kodungallur film society case (also of 2018) are being complied with and in what manner.”
It asked the petitioners, represented by senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, to supply the list of incidents for 2021-22 in the eight selected states within a month and thereafter gave two months’ time for the MHA to seek verification reports from respective states on the steps taken by the law enforcement agencies in relation to the alleged incidents of violence.
“The chief secretaries of the eight states shall ensure that due information is given to MHA on registration of FIRs, status of investigation, arrests made and charge sheets filed,” the bench said. “After the verification process is over, the court directed the MHA to file an affidavit giving a tabular chart indicating the result of verification in each case.”
Solicitor general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, was opposed to an omnibus order directing verification of all allegations.
“As the petition was filed and projected, the government took it seriously and conducted a fact check,” he submitted to the court. “The moment court accepts the allegations and issues notice based on total falsehood, it has ramifications outside India.”
The bench said there is no presumption that what the petitioners are saying is true. “When they (petitioners) are pointing out facts which deserve our scrutiny, we are seeking verification of those facts. The individual victims may not have resources to approach this court.”
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The Centre said the petitioners should support such victims with legal help to approach courts. “Some instances may be true but our data says it is concocted,” Mehta said, adding, “This has now become a pattern. Before filing a petition, send a fact finding team and then rely on tabloid reports to show a pattern.”
The bench did not deny the possibility of a normal criminal case being projected as an attack against a member of a religious community. “If a member of any religious community is subject to any attack, just because that person may belong to any one religion, it may not be a communal attack,” the bench observed.
Gonsalves told the court that some of the instances showed targeted attacks as prayer meetings were disrupted and the Bible burnt. When the court enquired if FIRs were registered, Gonsalves showed an instance where the police allegedly directed the Christian group not to hold prayer and let off the person accused of inflicting injuries on victims after keeping him for two hours.
“The issues highlighted can always be taken care of by law enforcing agencies in respective states under the process of law or by the affected parties by approaching the respective high courts,” the Centre had said in its affidavit. “Enquiries reveal that the majority of the incidents alleged as Christian persecution in these reports were either false or wrongfully projected. In some cases, incidents of purely criminal nature and arising out of personal issues have been categorised as violence targeting Christians.”
