Courts to deal with cases against minorities mooted

Hyderabad: In order to protect the rights of minorities, the Minority Commission for the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana  on Friday released a draft bill to enable setting up of special courts for speedy trial of the cases like offences of atrocities against minorities, Dalits and other marginalized sections.

Addressing newsmen, chairman of the State Minorities Commission Abid Rasool Khan, said ‘‘In the recent past, we received many complaints from Christian and Muslim communities about the problems being faced by them. To prevent these atrocities against them, we prepared a blue print of ‘The Minorities, Dalits and other Marginalised Section (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 2015’. The draft bill will be made available to the general public in the next 15 days and after receiving the feedback, changes will be made accordingly and will be sent to the Assembly,” he said.

“The bill has a provision to book criminal cases against officials harassing minorities. We want to get this bill in the parliament by next winter session.

We are open to amendments and have no problem even if the entire bill is rewritten. We just want this bill to be passed so that the minorities are protected,” he added.

According to the bill, special courts should be established in every district to hear cases related to minorities, New Indian Express reported.

The bill has the provision to book criminal cases against officials harassing minorities– any public servant, who commits any offence under this section, can be punished for a term not less than one year. Crimes like murder and rape are not included in this Act and will be dealt according to the Indian Penal Code.

Minorities Panel to Submit report on Alair Encounter:

The commission will submit to the government a 700-page report on the Alair encounter on Tuesday. Abid Rasool Khan said ‘’We have completed preparing a detailed report on Alair encounter, in which five suspected terror operatives were killed, and will submit the report on November 17. In spite of repeated requests, some of the officials did not bother to file their replies, so we have filed the report with the available information.”

On April 7 this year, five undertrial prisoners Viquaruddin, Mohammed Haneef, Syed Amjad Ali, Mohammed Zakir and Izhar Khan were killed in a encounter by the Telangana state police at Alair on way to Nampally court in Hyderabad from Warangal central prison.