India's judicial process has "failed" to ensure justice for many of the victims of past human rights violations, violence against religious minorities and corporate abuses, a top human rights body said Wednesday.
"Judicial processes (in India) continued to fail to ensure justice for many victims of past human rights violations, violence against religious minorities and corporate abuses," Amnesty International report 2010 on the
State of the World's Human Rights, said.
In an interview to PTI, Claudio Cordone, Amnesty International's interim Secretary General, said "India does have an important role to play both at the regional and global levels and we have taken up issues of human rights concerns with the Indian Government."
He said "India does face threats from terrorists and this is a serious challenge."
He strongly condemned the recent Maoists' attack on innocent civilians. "We condemn the attack on civilians by Maoists and we are very concerned about it."
"Both sides abducted, tortured and killed people with impunity, often target civilians. The paramilitary forces include the Salwa Judum militia, widely believed to be sponsored by the state."
Answering a question, he said Amnesty had sent a delegation to Jammu and Kashmir state in North india for preliminary visit and met representatives all parties.
"We are concerned about preventive detentions and some of the practices resorted to both armed forces and militants.
Militants in Jammu and Kashmir did attack Hindus and Muslims and there were also certain excesses by the armed forces."
Cordone, Amnesty International's interim Secretary General, claimed that tighter anti-terror and security legislation in the wake of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks was linked to reports of arbitrary detention and torture.
"Investigations into the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai and elsewhere led to the detention under various security laws of more than 30 suspects without charge in several states, for periods ranging from one week to two months."
The report said marginalised communities, including landless farmers and Adivasis in several states, were threatened with forced evictions to accommodate industrial and other business projects.
In some cases, Adivasis were threatened with eviction from lands defined as exclusively theirs by the Indian Constitution.
Referring to the communal violence in Gujarat, the report said "most of those responsible for the attacks on Muslim minorities in 2002 in Gujarat and other human rights
violations, including extra-judicial executions in that state, were not brought to justice. Existing cases made little progress during the year.
In Orissa, it said some 15,000 people, mostly Christians were displaced in 2008 following violence by hundreds of supporters of Hindu nationalist organisations. By year's end, most had yet to return home.