By PTI
Lucknow, Jan 6 (PTI) A special NIA court has directed the Centre and the Bar Council of India (BCI) to inquire into the fund sources of around a dozen prominent NGOs which, it said, rush to provide legal aid to defend those accused of terrorist and anti-national activities.
The court has also asked the Union Home Ministry and the BCI to collect information regarding the collective objectives of these NGOs and take appropriate action to check them from undue interference in the judicial process.
Among the NGOs named are Citizen for Justice and Peace (Mumbai), People’s Union For Civil Liberties (New Delhi), United Against Hate (New Delhi) and Indian American Muslim Council (Washington DC).
Special NIA court judge VS Tripathi issued the directives recently while sentencing 28 convicts to life imprisonment in the Kasganj communal violence case in which a Hindu youth had died during Tiranga Yatra on Republic Day in 2018.
The court called upon the intelligentsia, institutions and stakeholders of the judicial system to look into why such NGOs jump to defend and provide legal aid to the accused of terror and anti-national activities cases, while there are already provisions in the law to provide any accused a lawyer free of cost if he is not in a position to defend himself in a court of law.
“These stakeholders should look into the role of these NGOs in the Kasganj communal violence case also,” the court said and expressed serious concern about the role of these NGOs which allegedly hired costly lawyers for the accused in this case.
This story was originally published in theprint.in. Read the full story here.
