Allahabad: The Allahabad High Court has entered into a debatable investigation of 558 madrassas in Uttar Pradesh. The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) headed the investigation after being requested by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) due to a complaint being filed by a man known as Mohammad Talha Ansari. The complaint claimed that the madrassas had been infringing upon human rights which prompted the NHRC to order the EOW to initiate an investigation.
Both the NHRC orders (28 February and 11 June) and a later order by the government, of 23 April, requiring the investigation, were challenged by an aggrieved party. The petition challenged the validity of the inquiry and demanded the cancellation of the NHRC orders and stated that the EOW had no jurisdiction to do so.
On Monday, a bench that included Justices Saral and Amitabh Kumar Rai, left the NHRC orders on hold and, to safeguard the order, issued notices to the NHRC and the complainant. The court appointed a hearing date of 17 November where all parties would be allowed to argue their case.
At the center of the arguments made by the bench was the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993. In Section 12, the authority of the NHRC is clearly defined and in Section 36, it is limited to one-year, a commission cannot enquire into a claim when over a year has elapsed after the claimed violation. In addition, Section 12-A clarifies that NHRC may act on its own initiative, a petition by a victim or another person acting on behalf of a victim or under the instruction of a court. In this instance, no one of these statutory triggers was activated because of petition.
More importantly, the complainant was not specific enough in her statement, because she did not provide a definite date when the alleged human-rights violation had taken place. The court considered that, in the absence of a temporal parameter, it could not identify whether the complaint was within the one-year parameter required by the Act. As a result, the bench found that the initiative taken by the NHRC was outside its scope.
The respondents were asked to submit their responses within four weeks, and the court will re-examine the case on the designated date. These ruling highlights how procedural adherence and accurate factual allegations of the investigations of human-rights are vital.
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