ABSTRACT
The ultimate aim of the criminal justice system is to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. However, in our country and around the world, there have been instances where the system has failed. It has often led to wrongful convictions and imprisonment of many innocent individuals. Even after they are declared innocent, many receive little or no support to rebuild the lives they have lost. So, this paper examines the absence of a statutory compensation framework for persons who have been wrongfully convicted in India. Anchored in the case of Vishnu Tiwari, who spent 20 years in prison for a crime that the Allahabad High Court ultimately found he did not commit, the article traces the constitutional and judicial remedies presently available under Article 21 of the Constitution, [1]evaluates their inadequacy, and examines the Law Commission of India’s 277th Report of 2018, which recommended a dedicated legislative scheme that are yet to be implemented.
Further, this research involves a doctrinal method of research based on examining court decisions, statutes, Law Commission reports, and relevant case laws of the UK & US to come up with attributes that can be considered ideal for implementing an effective compensation scheme in India. The paper concludes by stating that the current practice of compensation on a case- to-case basis in India is inadequate and there is a need for a separate legislation defining terms such as wrongful conviction and establishing compensation guidelines and procedure to ensure restitution is provided to the wrongly convicted.
Keywords
Wrongful conviction; miscarriage of justice; compensation; Article 21; Law Commission of India; Report No. 277; criminal justice reform; undertrial prisoners; Vishnu Tiwari.
INTRODUCTION
On 28 January 2021, Vishnu Tiwari walked free from Agra Central Jail after twenty years behind bars.[2] He was 23 years old when he was first arrested in September 2000, accused of raping a woman from his village in Lalitpur, Uttar Pradesh.[3] Three years later, a trial court convicted him and sentenced him to life imprisonment under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.[4] Tiwari maintained his innocence throughout, but the circumstantial evidence, weak legal representation, and an appeal that remained “defective” and unheard for sixteen years conspired against him When the Allahabad High Court finally examined the record, it found that the medical evidence showed no signs of forcible intercourse, that the prosecution witnesses’ testimony was riddled with contradictions, and that Tiwari “had been wrongly convicted.”[5]
By the time the law caught up with the truth, it was too late to matter. Tiwari’s parents had died while he was in prison, and he had not been permitted to attend either of their funerals; his marriage prospects, his home, and his working life had all been consumed by two decades of wrongful incarceration.[6] He walked out of prison with roughly six hundred rupees and no institutional pathway to rebuild what had been taken from him. The National Human Rights Commission took cognisance of his case and sought a report on measures for his relief and rehabilitation, but this was an exceptional, reactive intervention rather than the operation of any established legal right.
Tiwari’s case is not an exception; it is illustrative. India’s prisons hold hundreds of thousands of undertrial prisoners at any given time, over 75 per cent of the total prison population, according to the National Crime Records Bureau’s Prison Statistics India reports for recent years.[7] Many of these individuals spend years in custody before trial concludes, and a meaningful proportion are eventually acquitted. Yet, unlike jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom and the United States, India has no statute that entitles an exonerated person to compensation as of right. The only recourse available is the constitutional remedy of a writ petition under Articles 32 or 226, invoking the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, and even this route depends entirely on the discretion of the constitutional courts, the resources of the petitioner, and the willingness of the state to acknowledge fault.[8]
This gap was formally recognised by the Delhi High Court in Babloo Chauhan @ Dabloo v. State Government of NCT of Delhi, [9]where the court observed that India had no statutory or legal scheme for compensating persons who are wrongfully incarcerated, and referred the issue to the Law Commission of India for comprehensive examination. The Commission’s Report No. 277, titled Wrongful Prosecution (Miscarriage of Justice): Legal Remedies, was submitted in August 2018 and proposed a detailed legislative framework, including a draft amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.[10] More than seven years later, no such legislation has been enacted. This article asks why that gap persists, what the existing patchwork of remedies actually offers to the wrongly convicted, and what a workable statutory framework in India should look like.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research follows a doctrinal research methodology based on the analysis of secondary sources, which are: The Constitution of India, Judicial decisions of the Supreme Court and High Courts, The Law Commission of India’s 277th Report (2018), Books and journal articles, Government reports and NCRB data, Comparative legal materials from the United Kingdom and the United States, Reliable news reports and documented cases of wrongful convictions
Research Objectives
- To examine the concept and causes of wrongful convictions in India.
- To analyse the legal remedies currently available to persons who have been wrongfully convicted.
- To examine the absence of a statutory compensation framework in India.
- To compare India’s legal position with compensation frameworks in other jurisdictions.
- To recommend measures for establishing an effective statutory compensation framework for wrongfully convicted persons.
Research Questions
- What are wrongful convictions and what are their major causes in India?
- What legal remedies are currently available to persons who have been wrongfully convicted?
- Are the existing constitutional and judicial remedies adequate?
- How do other countries compensate persons who have been wrongfully convicted?
- What reforms are necessary to establish an effective compensation framework in India?
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
This topic is something which have been studied extensively across the globe, especially in countries like the United Kingdom and the US. People have always tried to understand why innocent people are convicted and what faults or loopholes in the system cause this, and what the systems should do to compensate them after they are found to be innocent. Scholars like Ronald Huff, Arye Rattner, and Edward Sagarin,[11] who are known as the founding fathers of the modern study of wrongful convictions, explain that miscarriages of justice can occur at different stages of the criminal process, including wrongful arrest, wrongful prosecution, and wrongful conviction. Their work has become an important reference for later research in this field.
In the United States, the Innocence Project (a non-profit legal organisation) made significant contributions by highlighting the common causes of wrongful convictions. [12]With many years of research and litigation, it was understood that mistaken eyewitness identification, false confessions, unreliable forensic evidence, police misconduct, and prosecutorial errors are some of the major reasons why innocent people are convicted. Their work also shows that while many countries provide compensation to wrongfully convicted people, the process and amount of compensation differ from one legal system to another. Likewise, in India the discussions regarding compensation for wrongful conviction was largely developed through judicial decisions and precedents. The Supreme Court, in cases like Rudul Sah v. State of Bihar,[13] Bhim Singh v. State of Jammu & Kashmir,[14] and Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa,[15] recognised that compensation can be awarded when a person’s fundamental rights, particularly the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, are violated. However, many legal scholars have pointed out that these decisions mainly deal with illegal detention and constitutional remedies rather than wrongful convictions after a full criminal trial. So, since there are no specific laws governing compensation, the relief granted by courts depends largely on the facts of each case and the discretion of the judiciary in our country.
In 2018, a huge contribution to this area was the 277th Report of the Law Commission of India. [16]After studying the legal position in India and comparing it with a lot of other countries, the commission came with the introduction of a separate law to compensate persons who have been wrongfully prosecuted. This report clearly suggested a legal definition of wrongful prosecution, the establishment of special courts to decide compensation claims, guidelines for determining compensation, and the provision of interim relief wherever necessary.
Recently, a few articles and commentaries have shown their support to these legislations, but they have also criticized the absence of any legislative action. It has been pointed out that even though the courts have sometimes awarded compensation in certain cases like the Nambi Narayan case[17]. There is still no uniform legal framework that guarantees relief to every person who has suffered a wrongful conviction. As a result, compensation in India continues to depend largely on judicial discretion rather than a statutory right. The existing literature clearly recognises the seriousness of wrongful convictions and the need to protect the rights of innocent persons. However, there is still a limited discussion on how India can develop a comprehensive statutory compensation framework specifically for persons who have been wrongfully convicted. This paper attempts to address that gap by examining the shortcomings of the present legal system and suggesting reforms that can ensure fair, effective, and timely compensation.
METHOD: DOCTRINAL ANALYSIS OF THE EXISTING FRAMEWORK
(a) The Constitutional Remedy and Its Limitations
In our country India there is no specific law that gives compensation for those who have been wrongfully convicted. So basically, a person who has been acquitted after being wrongly imprisoned must approach the Supreme Court under Article 32 or a High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution and this claim would be mostly based on the violation of the person’s fundamental right to life and personal liberty guaranteed under Article 21 of the constitution.Through these years, the Supreme Court has recognised that compensation may be awarded for the violation of fundamental rights. For example, in cases such as Rudul Sah v. State of Bihar,[18] Sube Singh v. State of Haryana,[19] and Dr. Rini Johar v. State of Madhya Pradesh,[20] the Court awarded monetary compensation to individuals who had suffered unlawful detention or other serious violations of their personal liberty. But even if these judgments have provided relief in some cases, the present system has several limitations.
Firstly, here compensation is not considered as a legal right. Whether to award compensation or not completely depends on the discretion of the court. Which means there is no fixed rule regarding when compensation should be granted or how much should be awarded. As a result, different cases may receive different outcomes.[21] Secondly, compensation is generally awarded only in exceptional cases involving serious violations of fundamental rights. Many persons who are wrongfully convicted may never receive any compensation because their cases might not attract the same level of judicial attention or they are unable to approach the higher courts due to other reasons. Thirdly, Indian law does not clearly define what amounts to a wrongful conviction or a miscarriage of justice for the purpose of claiming compensation. This creates uncertainty and ambiguity regarding who is entitled to seek compensation and under what circumstances.
Finally, approaching a supreme court or high court requires a lot of time, money and legal knowledge. Most of the people who are released after years of wrongful imprisonment comes from economically weaker sections of society and are unable to pursue lengthy constitutional litigation. The case of Vishnu Tiwari is a great example for this situation. It illustrates this difficulty, as his appeal remained unheard for many years before legal assistance was eventually provided. Therefore, these limitations show that the existing constitutional remedy, although important, cannot by itself provide a complete and effective solution for persons who have been wrongfully convicted. This highlights the need for a comprehensive statutory framework that guarantees timely and fair compensation.
(b) The Law Commissions Proposed Framework
The Law Commission of India in its 277th report in 2018, addressed these issues and recommended the introduction of a separate law to provide compensation for persons who have been wrongfully prosecuted and convicted. The suggestion of the commision was that compensation should not be granted in every case of acquittal. Instead, it should be available only in cases where it is clearly established that the person was innocent and had suffered a genuine miscarriage of justice.[22] Hence, this would make sure that the law is used only in deserving cases and not merely because the prosecution failed to prove its case. Further, the report had also suggested the establishment of Special Courts at the district level to hear compensation claims so that these courts would decide such claims within a reasonable time and determine the amount of compensation by considering factors such as the number of years spent in prison, loss of income and employment, damage to reputation, physical and mental suffering, and the legal expenses incurred by the victim.
Another major recommendation of this commission was the grant of interim compensation so that wrongfully convicted persons could receive immediate financial assistance while their compensation claims were being decided. The Commission also addressed the issue that even after being declared innocent, many individuals continue to face difficulties in finding employment, obtaining licences, and rebuilding their lives. Therefore, it recommended removing such civil disabilities and helping victims reintegrate into society. Also the law commission even drafted an amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure. But however, even after all these detailed recommendations no legislation has been enacted by the parliament. Hence India still relies mainly on constitutional remedies developed by the courts, and there is no uniform statutory framework that guarantees compensation to every person who has been wrongfully convicted.
(C) Comparative Perspective
Countries all around the world have recognised this need to compensate people who have been wrongfully convicted and have also introduced specific laws for this purpose. In the UK, the Criminal Justice Act 1988 provides a statutory framework for compensation in cases where a person’s conviction is overturned because new evidence proves that a miscarriage of justice has occurred, and the amount of compensation is assessed independently based on established guidelines.[23] Next, the United States they do not have a single nationwide compensation law but instead, it has a federal law for wrongful convictions in federal cases, while many individual states have enacted their own compensation statutes. Even though the eligibility criteria and amount of compensation differ from one state to another, these laws recognise that persons who have been wrongfully convicted deserve compensation for the harm they have suffered. [24]Despite these differences in the legal systems both countries have certain common features. Mainly, they provide a legal framework that allows eligible individuals to claim compensation, lay down conditions for determining who is entitled to relief, and establish a mechanism for deciding compensation claims.
In contrast to all these, India does not have a dedicated law governing compensation for convictions. Instead, relief is granted mainly through constitutional remedies developed by courts, which are discretionary in nature and are available only in very limited circumstances. Therefore, this highlights the need for a comprehensive statutory framework, like those adopted in other jurisdictions, while considering India’s own constitutional and legal system.
SUGGESTIONS
- First, the Parliament should enact a dedicated statute, as recommended by the Law Commission, to establish the right to compensation for wrongful prosecution or conviction, rather than relying on ad hoc judicial decisions that provide only fragmented redress. By creating a statutory entitlement, compensation claims would no longer depend on the discretion of writ courts, and wrongfully accused individuals would not be required to navigate complex procedural laws to have their claims heard.
- Second, the statute must include a clear and workable definition of “wrongful prosecution” or “wrongful conviction” to distinguish genuine miscarriages of justice from routine acquittals based on reasonable doubt, thereby targeting only those cases involving a demonstrable error, as identified in Tiwari’s “positive error,” without resulting in excessive fiscal or administrative burdens.
- Third, the statute should mandate expedited adjudication, either through special courts as suggested by the Commission or through another tribunal, with strict timelines for resolving compensation claims, since delay itself constitutes a significant part of the harm suffered.
- Fourth, the statute should establish guidelines for equitable assessment of compensation, considering factors such as the duration of wrongful custody, loss of livelihood, reputation, social standing, family life, personal injury, trauma, loss of statutory benefits, and reasonable legal expenses. These guidelines should allow sufficient flexibility for courts to determine compensation on a case-by-case basis, including the provision of interim compensation pending final assessment.
- Fifth, compensation should be supplemented by additional rehabilitation measures, such as counseling, re-skilling, expungement of convictions from public records, and restoration of employment and other entitlements, as deprivation of these can be as damaging as the wrongful conviction itself.
- Sixth, given that wrongful convictions in India disproportionately affect undertrials and convicts from scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and other marginalized groups who often lack the resources or legal literacy to seek redress the statute and its rules should include specific provisions for these individuals, such as mandating the provision of legal aid alongside compensation to prevent further injustice.
Finally, if compensation legislation is not enacted promptly, the National and State Human Rights Commissions and State Legal Services Authorities should be instructed to proactively review petitions for sentence enhancement by undertrials and convicts, addressing the institutional gap that led to the dismissal of Tiwari’s sixteen-year petition for review as “defective”.
CONCLUSION
Vishnu Tiwari’s twenty years of imprisonment represent not merely a personal tragedy but rather the foreseeable consequence of a system lacking institutional safeguards to ensure that the innocent receive meaningful redress upon justification. Since the Rudul Sah decision, India’s constitutional courts have acknowledged their jurisdiction to compensate victims of unlawful detention and, on occasion, those wrongfully convicted. However, this jurisdiction remains discretionary, inconsistent, and largely inaccessible to most individuals it is intended to protect. Both the Delhi High Court and the Law Commission of India have thoroughly analysed the issue and proposed comprehensive statutory solutions. The primary obstacle remains the absence of legislative initiative. Unless Parliament enacts a dedicated compensation framework as recommended in Report No. 277, including a clear definition of wrongful conviction, specialized adjudicatory bodies, established criteria for compensation, and provisions for both monetary and rehabilitative relief, the criminal justice system in India will persist in treating exoneration as the conclusion of the process for the innocent. For individuals such as Vishnu Tiwari, however, release with only the erasure of a wrongful conviction often marks merely the beginning of the arduous process of reclaiming a life unjustly taken by the State.
Sreenanda Pramod
National University of Advanced Legal Studies, Kochi
[1] India Const. art. 21.
[2] India: After 20 years in jail, UP man found ‘wrongly convicted’, Gulf News (Feb. 25, 2021),
[3] Neelu Sharma, How Do I Start Life at 43, Asks Vishnu Tiwari Who Spent 20 Years in Jail in False Rape Case, ThePrint (Mar. 10, 2021).
[4] Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, No. 33 of 1989, India Code (1989).
[5] Vishnu Kumar Tiwari v. State of Uttar Pradesh, Criminal Appeal No. 1015 of 2019 (Arising out of SLP (Crl.) No. 9654 of 2017),
[6] Family Ostracized, Died, Land Sold: NHRC Demands Justice for Vishnu Tiwari Who Is Acquitted After 20 Years in Jail in Bogus Rape Case, BNB Legal (Mar. 6, 2021).
[7] Nat’l Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs, Gov’t of India, Prison Statistics India 2022 (2023); Nat’l Crime Records Bureau, Prison Statistics India 2023 (2024).
[8] India Const. art. 21; Rudul Sah v. State of Bihar, AIR 1983 SC 1086.
[9] Babloo Chauhan @ Dabloo v. State Gov’t of NCT of Delhi, 247 (2018) DLT 31 (Del. H.C.).
[10] Law Commission of India, Wrongful Prosecution (Miscarriage of Justice): Legal Remedies, Report No. 277 (Aug. 2018) [hereinafter Law Comm’n Rep. No. 277].
[11] . Ronald Huff, Arye Rattner & Edward Sagarin, Convicted But Innocent: Wrongful Conviction and Public Policy (Sage Publications 1996).
[12] The Innocence Project, Causes of Wrongful Conviction (2023), https://innocenceproject.org.
[13] Rudul Sah v. State of Bihar, AIR 1983 SC 1086.
[14] Bhim Singh, MLA v. State of J. & K., (1985) 4 SCC 677
[15] Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa, AIR 1993 SC 1960
[16] Law Comm’n Rep. No. 277,
[17] Nambi Narayanan v. State of Kerala, Civil Appeal Nos. 11881–11882 of 2018 (Sup. Ct. India, decided Sept. 14, 2018); PRS Legislative Research, Report Summary: Wrongful Prosecution (Miscarriage of Justice): Legal Remedies (2018), https://prsindia.org.
India Const. arts. 32, 226.
[18] Rudul Sah v. State of Bihar, AIR 1983 SC 1086.
[19] Sube Singh v. State of Haryana, (2006) 3 SCC 178;
[20] Dr. Rini Johar v. State of Madhya Pradesh, Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 30 of 2015 (Sup. Ct. India).
[21] Law Comm’n of India, Report No. 277: Wrongful Prosecution (Miscarriage of Justice): Legal Remedies (Aug. 2018).
[22] Law Comm’n of India, Report No. 277: Wrongful Prosecution (Miscarriage of Justice): Legal Remedies (Aug. 2018).
[23] Criminal Justice Act 1988, c. 33, § 133 (UK), as amended.
[24] Unjust Conviction Compensation, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1495, 2513 (2018).