NO STAY ON ORDER THAT LED TO BANDH

Innocent citizens cannot be terrorised by SC/ST Act provisions, says court. It has only put filters in place

Innocents cannot be terrorised by the provisions of the SC/ST Act and their fundamental rights need to be protected, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday, as it refused to keep its March 20 verdict in abeyance.

The apex court also said that it is not against the SC/ST Act and the "provisions of anticipatory bail have been introduced as unlike other laws, no forum was available for the innocents to seek remedy under the Act".

"We have said that innocents should not penalised. The innocents cannot be terrorised by the provisions of the SC/ST Act. We don't want to deprive anyone of right to life and we make ourselves very clear that we are not against the Act or the complainants," a bench of justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and U U Lalit said while justifying directions given in the March 20 verdict which created much furore across the country.

The bench, which was hearing the Centre's review petition in open court, said that its verdict can be only be reviewed if there is a "patent error" in law.

It insisted that the mandate of court is to protect Constitutional rights and "the fundamental rights of citizens

have to be kept at the highest pedestal". "Rights of innocents cannot be taken away without giving any remedy to them," it said and added "people who are agitating may have not read the order. They might not know what is in the order or they may have been misled by people having a vested interest".

In response to a submission of Attorney General K K Venugopal that Article 21 also applies to victims of atrocities, the bench said that Article 21 of the Constitution equally applies to all the citizens and none of the provisions of SC/ST Act have been diluted.