Civil Rights Initiative
About Us
Access to justice is the foundation of any guarantee to civil liberties. The Civil Rights Initiative has developed as an independent unit of the Women's Rights Initiative in an effort to strengthen and facilitate this access. The Civil Rights Initiative seeks to make the legal aid system in India (starting from the State of Delhi) more accessible and accountable to those sections of society, that are marginalized economically, socially or on the basis of religion. This project hopes to strengthen and supplement the state legal aid machinery, by forging a symbiotic relationship with them through training, infrastructure development and improved outreach.
In furtherance to its commitment to the right to legal aid, the Director of the Civil Rights Initiative, Ms. Indira Jaising, Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court, on being approached, on behalf of, Muhammad Afzal ( convicted by the Hon'ble Supreme Court for conspiring to attack the India Parliament in 2001) after perusing the case papers, agreed to certify that his was a case fit for curative consideration by the Supreme Court, because in fact M. Afzal had been tried and convicted by the trial court, without being accorded a defence counsel, in violation of the constitutional guarantee of the right to legal defence and legal aid.
The Civil Rights Initiative has been working on legal cases that emerged from the Gujarat Genocide of 2002. The scope of our legal involvement in Gujarat includes giving legal advice and assistance to other organization working in Gujarat. The Civil Rights Initiative has preferred a civil suit for damages on behalf of the Dawood family, who were among the victims of the Gujarat genocide, perpetrated with the tacit complicity of the State Government of Gujarat. This civil suit is pending in the Himmat Nagar, Session Court, against the Chief Minister and the State of Gujarat. This is a path breaking litigation, not only because it seeks to bring accountability and justice against the highest echelons of power, but also because it is the first tort claim of its kind in India.
The Civil Rights Initiative has also been representing cases on behalf of survivors of the genocide in the Supreme Court including the petition for compensation and rehabilitation. The pending cases include survivor's rights petitions seeking directions from the Supreme Court to strengthen the rights and role of complainants in criminal prosecution, which is traditionally seen as the sole preserve of the State. Where the state machinery witnesses a break down, as was seen in the Gujarat Genocide of 2002, this classic model of criminal justice breaks down completely leaving the survivors remedy less.
The Civil Rights Initiative also hopes to be facilitating a documentation centre for information on civil liberties issues and to provide legal services to organizations and initiative on issues of civil liberties that need legal representation in the apex courts of India.