Headless human rights panel sleeps over 27,605 cases

Mysore: Two years ago 35 year old Kamala (name changed) lost her mind after she was allegedly tortured by the Kothanur police in Bangalore, which was acting on what her family claims was a false complaint against her.

While the woman's husband  died of a heart attack two days after the trauma she suffered, the family is still waiting for justice. Unfortunately the state human rights commission (SHRC) which is burdened with many such cases, is unable to process all of them on time, as it is not only headless, but lacks even a secretary to look into them. 

Although as many as 27,605 of the 44,099 cases registered by the commission over the last few years  are pending disposal, the government has made no move to appoint a chairman for the commission which  been headless since  Justice S. R. Nayak's term ended on July 25, 2012.

The commission has not had a secretary either since June  that year. The two members of the SHRC appointed in November 2012 are overburdened as the cases coming to it have been rising with every passing year.  Sadly,  cases that are required to be handled by the chairman himself have not been touched in this period.

Until  December 2007, there were as many as 890 cases with the commission and it disposed of 435 of them. In 2008, it registered 4905 cases and disposed of 2261. In 2009, 4325 of the 8179 cases  were disposed of and the following year of the 8911 registered,  7165  were dealt with.

But the commission clearly began to struggle in 2012 when it disposed of only 850 of the 6199 cases registered as it did not have even members between August and November  that year.  This year  till November 30, it has managed to dispose of only 3002 of the 5341 cases registered.

"We  wrote  to the CM in December 2012 to appoint a chairman of the commission, but have not received any response so far," deplores Mathew Philip, executive director of SICHREM,  a human rights organisation, adding that a PIL is pending before the high court.

The NGO  plans to hold a candlelight vigil and a rally to mark Human Rights day on Tuesday,  and intends to use the occasion to make a plea for a commission chairman.