Kamal Ghorui
New Delhi: Suggesting amendments to penal laws to provide harsh punishment to acid attack convicts, Supreme Court on Tuesday opined that the present reform-oriented sentencing system must not apply to such convicts and their properties should be auctioned to compensate acid attack survivors.After acid attack survivor-petitioner Shaheen Malik narrated her pains, legal fight for 16 years and acquittal of all accused, a bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justices R Mahadevan and Joymalya Bagchi said, “Some extraordinary punitive measures are needed to be taken to deter people from assaulting others with acid or other corrosive substances.” The bench asked additional SG Archana Pathak Dave to get the Centre’s response in four weeks.The bench asked additional SG Archana Pathak Dave to get the Centre’s response in four weeks on creating a dedicated corpus to compensate acid attack survivors and on bringing amendments to penal laws to shift the onus of proving innocence on the accused by carving out an exception to the general rule “innocent till proven guilty in a court of law”.The CJI Kant-led bench said it will also examine whether personal properties of an acid attack case convict should be attached and auctioned to compensate the survivor. To prevent an accused from creating third party interest in their assets, the trial court should attach the properties and auction it after the accused is found guilty, it said, adding that “the system, police and courts must adopt a harsh approach towards acid attack accused”.The court was informed by advocate Sija Nair that the trial gets vitiated because of the snail-paced process and said trial in an acid attack case in West Bengal is pending for the last 23 years. She said 15 high courts have submitted pendency of acid attack trials in their jurisdictions and the highest number of trials at 198 are pending in Uttar Pradesh, followed by West Bengal (160), Gujarat (114) and 60-odd each in Bihar and Maharashtra.
