Affront on the SC/ST (prevention of atrocities) Act
iasparliament
July 21, 2018
What is the issue?
Supreme Court in early 2018 stressed the need for providing inbuilt safeguards within the SC/ST (prevention of atrocities) Act to plug its misuse.
While this was for preventing the framing of innocents, the leeway that will be provided, is likely to aid offenders get away.
What are the implications of the verdict?
What - SC/ST (prevention of atrocities) Act is a standalone legal protection granted to the depressed classes against casteist slurs, abuses and violence.
The act also provides for stringent provisions like non-bailable warrants and a subsequent fast-track trial to settle the case.
Nonetheless, despite these strong provisions, casteist crimes continue to dominate the larger narrative in most parts of rural India.
Considering the context, framing of innocents under the act is likely to be rare and the court verdict asking for safeguards to prevent misuse looks naive.
Verdict - The court seems to have had a narrow minded focus on few cases of misuse of the act by elitist SC/STs sitting in high government/private offices.
The call for new guidelines to deal with accused persons is hence likely to dilute the act and provide scope for offenders to escape.
On the whole, the judgment is likely to make the depressed class more vulnerable to abuse and further their victimisation.
More significantly, it seems to convey that the act is being misused considerably by the depressed classes to blackmail and frame innocents.
What are the concerns with court’s rationale?
Conviction rate - The Supreme Court has taken note of the large number of acquittals in SC/ST atrocities cases as an indicator of them being largely false.
But this is a flawed logic, because in SC/ST abuse cases, the accused tend to processes significant social and economic heft in their localities.
Contrastingly, the victims tend to be those on the margins of the society who’ll have to face police apathy and institutional suppression.
Additionally, the conviction rate under other acts isn’t very impressive either.
Data Trend - There is also no precise data on the scale and extent to which the Act has been misused by the elitist SC/ST government/private employees.
With little data, the court seems to have concluded that there is considerable misuse of the act by the SC/STs to settle personal scores.
Misuse prevention - There are already provisions within the “Indian Penal Code”, which prescribe punishments for falsifying evidence.
The court’s verdict doesn’t specify on why these were found insufficient to deal with the falsified SC/ST atrocity cases too.
What are the other procedural flaws in the verdict?
Considering the implications, it would’ve been prudent for the bench to have sought larger consultations before pronouncing its verdict.
Article 338 stipulates that governments should consult the “National Commission for SC” on all major policy matters affecting Scheduled Castes.
Similarly, article 338 A mandates all major policy decision affecting STs to be taken in consultation with “National Commission for Scheduled Tribes”.
Considering this, Supreme Court is also bound to hear these commissions before pronouncements that are likely to impact SC/STs on a whole.
But in its urge to weed out the misuse of SC/ST atrocities act, the court seems to have subdued constitutional prudence and overlooked the commissions.
Some argue that SC’s verdict doesn’t constitute a major impactful policy decision and that it merely tweaked the existing act.
But spontaneous protests that erupted in the aftermath indicate otherwise, and the verdict was definitely seen as a major affront on social justice.
