Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Taking strong cognizance of “misuse” that the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 is being subjected to, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court yesterday passed a slew of stringent directions intended to be followed in the enforcement of this law.

The bench, comprising of Justices U.U. Lalit and A.K. Goel, said this three-decade old law, which aims to protect members of the SC/ST community from social atrocities, is being widely “abused” by vested interests against political opponents in panchayat, municipal or other elections, to settle private civil disputes arising out of property, monetary disputes, employment disputes and seniority disputes.

“This court is not expected to adopt a passive or negative role and remain a bystander or spectator if violation of rights is being observed. It is necessary to fashion new tools and strategies so as to check the injustice and violation of fundamental rights. No procedural technicalities can stand in the way of enforcement of fundamental rights,” observed the court as valid grounds for passing directives that are to be followed whenever cases of the SC/ST Act come up.

As per the court’s directives, no government official can be automatically arrested under provisions of this Act; he can be arrested only after the approval of the appointing authority and of a non-public servant upon request of the concerned Senior Superintendent of Police, if considered for reasons recorded.

In order to tackle the practice of false implications that are commonly made with malicious intentions against innocent people, the court said that before making any arrests an officer of the Deputy Superintendent rank must first conduct a preliminary enquiry to find out whether allegations made are genuine or are just frivolous and motivated.

Addressing a provision of the Act which makes it difficult for accused persons to avail anticipatory bails, the court said there will be no protection available to innocent citizens if they cannot avail bails, and this violates the fundamental right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution. To address this point, the bench ruled that anticipatory bails must be granted if a prima facie case is not made out.

This judgement was delivered by the court in connection to an appeal filed by one Subhash Mahajan against a Bombay High Court order which refused to quash an FIR against him on charges of offences allegedly committed under this Act. The court said that the Legislature “never intended to use the Atrocities Act as an instrument to blackmail or to wreck personal vengeance” and that is why such directions are necessary to curb its misuse.

By dhruv