Support Bharat Bandh against dilution of SC/ST Act
Support Bharat Bandh Against the Dangerous Dilutions in the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act by the Two-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court!
Union Govt Must File Review Petition!
Fight Back Patronage and Impunity to Casteist Violence and Discrimination!
In a shocking judgment on 20th March, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, comprising justice U.U. Lait and D. K. Goyel, has observed that the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 which protects the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from casteist discrimination, has become an instrument to “blackmail” public servants.
The Supreme Court bench directed that now on the public servants can only be arrested under the SC/ST Atrocities Act only with the written permission of their appointing authority. In the case of private employees, the Senior Superintendent of Police concerned should allow it. Further, a preliminary inquiry should be conducted before the FIR is registered to check whether the case falls within the parameters of the Atrocities Act and if it is “frivolous” or “motivated”. The court’s argument of intimidation and harassment of public servants through the SC/ST Act is also thoroughly absurd as Section 22 of the Act already protects public servants from prosecution if they acted in “good faith”.
Supreme Court Bench appallingly remarked in their judgment that the marginalized sections of society use the SC/ST Atrocities Act to exact “vengeance” and satisfy vested interests and the act even “perpetuate casteism”! In the wake of this outrageous judgment by the Supreme Court, let us look at the casteist reality of our country.
- With the Dalit population of over 18 crore, every 15 minutes a crime is committed against a Dalit in India. (The Wire, 28th March, 2018)
- There has been a 66% growth in crime against Dalits in the last ten years, from 2007 to 2017. Between 2015 and 2016, reported crimes against Dalits increased by 5.5% (from 38,670 to 40,801), and those against STs by 4.5% (from 6,276 to 6,568). (The Indian Express, 28th March, 2018)
- Rape and sexual violence against women constituted the largest number of cases of atrocities against SCs and STs. According to the data from the National Crime Records Bureau, the rape of Dalit women has doubled in the last 10 years. (The Hindu, 28th March, 2018)
- An analysis of the number of cases under SC/ST Act (that have come for trial between 2010 and 2016) demonstrates an alarmingly rising pendency, a steady decline in the number of cases that complete trial, and a fall in conviction rates.
In these seven years, the proportion of cases that were pending trial rose from 78% to 91% in the case of Dalits, and from 83% to 90% in the case of Adivasis. Conviction rates dropped sharply from 38% in 2010 to 16% in 2016 for crimes against SCs, and from 26% in 2010 to 8% in 2016 for crimes against STs. in 2016, only 1.4% of all crimes against SCs that came up for trial ended in convictions; for STs, the percentage was 0.8%. (The Indian Express, 28th March, 2018)
- The SC/ST Act also mandated a Special Court in every district for speedy trial to try cases under the Act. According to the latest report by the Ministry of Social Justice in 2015, there are only 194 such exclusive courts, fewer than a third of the number of districts in India. States without these Special Courts include Bihar, UP, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, and Telengana — which together account for more than 80% of the offences of atrocities against Dalits and Adivasis. (The Indian Express, 28th March, 2018)
In most of the cases the Scheduled Casts and Scheduled Tribes don’t file cases anticipating further upper caste violence. And even cases of caste atrocities reach the court; there are often acquittals due to casteist biases and discrimination within judiciary. For instance, we remember the Bihar High Court’s shameful acquittal in 2012 of all the accused in the Bathani Tola massacre case, overturning a lower court’s conviction of 23. On 11 July 1996, a private army of upper caste landlords (Ranveer Sena) brutally massacred 21 people (11 women; five girls below 10 years; four boys below 8 years; and one man) in the hamlet of Bathani Tola of Bhojpur (Bihar), most of whom were Dalit and Muslim landless poor. The Bihar HC verdict, acquitting all Bathani Tola accused, disgustingly holds that the witnesses (survivors) are “lying” and “spinning tales” and being “untrustworthy” and “totally unreliable”!
Friends, one cannot miss the fact that the Supreme Court verdict has come at a time when the entire country is witnessing an unprecedented surge in casteist communal violence patronised by the saffron brigade – from Una in Gujarat to Shabbirpur in UP, from Bhima Koregaon in Maharshtra to countless cases of fake encounters against Dalits-Bahujans-Minorities in UP. The SC judgment will only embolden the casteist forces patronized by the ruling party and will have a chilling effect on reporting atrocities against Dalits.
It is also important to note that this is the same ruling regime which didn’t put up a strong enough argument in favour of the SC/ST Act during the court proceedings as only three small paragraphs have been devoted for Government’s argument in the entire 20th March SC judgment. So in a bid to cover-up its own failings and deflect people’s anger, some of the Dalit MPs of NDA could be seen ‘meeting the PM and asking for Centre’s intervention to correct adverse repercussions of the SC judgment.
It is high time, we speak up against this dangerous dilution of the provisions of SC/ST Act and force the Central Government to file a review petition and pursue it thoroughly. In this context, extend our support to make the call for Bharat Bandh, given by different Dalit and other democratic parties and organizations, a massive success.
