Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Sept 1: The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the Ministry of Home Affairs to obtain verification reports from eight states on the steps taken on alleged attacks on Christian institutions and priests.
These states are Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, and Jharkhand.
Supreme Court said Chief Secretaries of these States should ensure to give information regarding registration of FIRs, status of the investigation, arrests made, and charge sheets filed.
An attack on an individual does not necessarily mean it is an attack on the community, according to a bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Hima Kohli, but it is necessary to confirm the claims of any such incidence if they are made in the public interest litigation, or PIL.
The majority of the claimed cases stated in the plea, according to Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, have been verified to be fictitious and to be based on “self-serving articles” posted on a web portal.
He argued that the court shouldn’t issue an order in response to such a plea since doing so would unleash a Pandora’s box. It was stated that the court’s only concern is that the States follow its earlier rulings on the establishment of nodal officials for reporting and monitoring of such instances.
The court’s decision was based on a petition that Rev. Dr. Peter Machado of the National Solidarity Forum, Rev. Vijayesh Lal of the Evangelical Fellowship of India, and others submitted, alleging that there had been violence against the nation’s Christians.
The apex court gave two months to the Home Ministry to seek reports from the States.
