At the end of July, a 15-year-old girl folded her hands, apologised to India, and released a video recording of it. She said she was ashamed and could not look at herself. She said it was her first and last mistake. She had shouted an obscenity about the prime minister at a student protest in Delhi.A police complaint had already been registered against her in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. It carried her home address. Strangers began turning up at her house. She was threatened over the phone with rape. Police came to the house twice in one day. She and her mother have moved three times since.The young girl is one of more than half a dozen women and girls picked out from protest footage this fortnight and pursued across Instagram and X. One is a yoga instructor who has lost most of her clients. Another is a widow who taught tuitions and has lost the work.The night before her apology, Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted a video on Instagram. Vile things had been said at Jantar Mantar about him and about his late mother, he said, and he wished to forgive the young people who had said them. Mistakes happen when one is young. Abuse never solves anything.Forgiveness runs one way. It belongs to the person who was harmed, and it moves from her towards the person who harmed her. The prime minister was insulted, and the insult was his to let go. He did not stop there. He absolved a generation in a dispute in which he stands accused, although the accusation has not been answered.The accusation is on the record. More than two crore young people sat an examination for roughly 1,40,000 medical seats. The paper leaked. The examination was cancelled and held again on June 21. At least 20 students are reported to have taken their own lives over that period.Students marched towards parliament on July 20 and were met with batons, tear gas and water cannons. More than a hundred were hospitalised. A nineteen-year-old had metal pellets taken out of his eye and was told the sight in it was gone.Delhi Police denied that pellet guns were used. Soon after, media reports said that an internal inquiry had found the Rapid Action Force (RAF) was issued those weapons on that day. Human Rights Watch has called for an investigation into the matter. The Union education minister resigned on July 25. Nothing else has changed.Also read: At Least 10 Persons Suffered Pellet Injuries on July 20 in Delhi, Shows RTI ResponseNo apology has been offered for any of it. Not to the families of the students who died. Not to the young man who will not see out of one eye. Not to the girls doxxed and threatened with rape for shouting at a politician.The ledger has been reversed in public. The government that failed these students has forgiven them, and the students are expected to be grateful.This is not an Indian invention. Institutions do it everywhere. A church that concealed the abuse of children will speak of its willingness to forgive those who keep dragging up the past. An employer that cheated its workers asks them to put bitterness behind them. The move is such that it does not have to deny that the injury happened. It only has to make the injured party appear to be the one behaving badly.It has worked here. A fortnight ago, the argument in India was about paper leaks, unemployment, dead students and a police charge on unarmed teenagers. Today it is about whether some girls used bad language.There is a constitutional point as well. In a republic, criticism of the head of government is not an offence requiring a pardon. It is ordinary citizenship, and it is protected even if it is rude. The complaint against the 15-year-old girl alleges intentional insult intended to provoke a breach of peace.But the peace was not breached. She was 15 and in a crowd, talking about a man who has held power for longer than her entire life. Politicians in working democracies hear worse every day of the week.What is owed here is not complicated: withdraw the complaint against a minor; investigate the threats made against her and the other women identified from protest footage. As of last week, no proceedings had been opened on any of them.Then, order an independent inquiry into the policing of July 20 and publish what weapons the RAF was issued and on whose authority it used them. Say something to the families of the students who died waiting for an examination system they believed could be trusted.An apology from a government is not a humiliation.The young at Jantar Mantar answered the offer of forgiveness with more mockery. They were called disrespectful for it. They had read the situation correctly: The man handing out pardons is the one who should be asking for one.Archbishop Joseph D’Souza is president, All India Christian Council and Archbishop, Anglican Good Shepherd Church of India.