New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to seek reports from various states, including Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand on alleged attacks on Christian institutions in India.
Noting that an attack on individuals didn’t mean it’s an attack on the community, a Bench led by Justice DY Chandrachud, however, said it needed to verify any such claims made in the PIL and gave two months to the MHA to seek reports from states.
On July 28, the Bench had expressed strong displeasure over news reports that said it was delaying hearing of a petition alleging increasing attacks on Christian institutions and priests in India. “Give us a break…There is a limit to targeting judges”, it had said.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said that on verification it was found the majority of the alleged cases mentioned in the PIL were false and based on “self-serving articles” published on a web portal.
The court should not pass an order on such a PIL, otherwise it will open Pandora’s Box, Mehta said.
It said that the court is only concerned that its earlier verdicts on the appointment of nodal officers for reporting and monitoring of such incidents are complied with by the States.
The order came on a PIL filed by Rev. Dr. Peter Machado of National Solidarity Forum, Rev. Vijayesh Lal of Evangelical Fellowship of India and others alleging violence against the Christian community in India.
Terming the petition alleging persecution of Christians as based on “falsehood” and “self-serving documents”, the Centre had on August 16 told the top court that such “deceptive petitions” were creating unrest in the country.
In an affidavit filed in response to a PIL, the MHA alleged that they were perhaps seeking to get assistance from outside to meddle with the internal affairs of India.
“…there appears to be some hidden oblique agenda in filing such deceptive petitions, creating unrest throughout the country and perhaps for getting assistance from outside the country to meddle with internal affairs of our nation,” the MHA said, accusing the petitioners of resorting to “falsehood” and “self-serving documents”. It said the reports cited to show Christian persecution were either “false” or “wrongfully projected”.
The petitioners demanded implementation of the top court’s guidelines in the Tehseen Poonawala’s case in 2018 in which nodal officers were ordered to be appointed to take note of hate crimes and register FIRs. The top court had issued a set of guidelines for the Centre and states, including fast-tracked trials, victim compensation, deterrent punishment and disciplinary action against lax law-enforcing officials.
“In some cases, incidents of purely criminal nature and arising out of personal issues have been categorised as violence targeting Christians…several incidents, which were found to be true or exaggerated, were not necessarily related to incidents of violence targeting Christians. For instance, incidents wherein merely complaints/accusations were made against Christians had also been cited as instances of persecution of a particular community in the report,” the Centre submitted.