A petitioner has asked the Supreme Court to direct the Centre and the states to provide compensation to innocent people arrested and jailed for long periods, the plea coming amid a spurt in citizens being put behind bars for criticising the government.

Wrongful imprisonment, resulting from “gross abuse of power and authority by the State” or from false allegations by citizens, violates a person’s right to life and liberty under Article 21, says the petition, moved on Thursday.

“There has been a spurt in false cases. Wrongful prosecution and incarceration of innocent persons with no effective statutory and legal mechanism available... is causing ‘miscarriage of justice’ and has created a black hole in the criminal jurisprudence of our country,” says the petition from Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, an advocate.

The petition says: “There are many startling cases which show the gross abuse of power and authority by the State and vexatious complainant(s), which caused absolute ‘miscarriage of justice’ by irreparable damage to right to life, liberty and dignity of innocent citizens in the justice dispensation with no relief given by the courts.”

The petition cites how, on January 28 this year, a division bench of Allahabad High Court declared an accused innocent after he had spent 20 years in jail.

Vishnu Tiwari had been arrested on September 16, 2000, after being accused of rape and atrocities under the SC/ST Act.

While acquitting Tiwari, however, the high court awarded no compensation, the petition says. It has urged the apex court to direct the central and state governments to evolve guidelines for awarding compensation to victims of wrongful prosecution.

The petition wants governments to pay compensation even in cases of malicious prosecution by individuals because it is the State’s duty to properly investigate any criminal complaint. Indian law, anyway, has a provision for punishing people who file false cases and forcing them to pay compensation to the victims.

The petition underlines that the Law Commission had in 2018 recommended compensation for victims of miscarriages of justice. It complains that the Centre has not implemented it.

It has suggested the top court frame the guidelines for compensation and direct the Centre and the states to follow them until the Law Commission recommendations are implemented.

The petition has cited the Delhi High Court ruling in Babloo Chauhan vs State Government of NCT of Delhi, which expressed concern at the lack of a legal framework to provide relief to people who are wrongly prosecuted and eventually acquitted after long imprisonment.

It was at the behest of this November 30, 2017, ruling that the law panel had gone into the subject and submitted its recommendations on August 30, 2018, the petition says.

It recalls that the Supreme Court too had held that compensation can be awarded for violation of Article 21, and that this had led to the award of compensation to some of those wrongly imprisoned.

The petition has quoted a Prison Survey of India report that says prisoners awaiting trial continue to outnumber convicts in India’s jails.