New Delhi, Aug 20: The Supreme Court has held that an alleged casteist insult made inside a closed room cannot automatically be treated as an offence under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, unless it is shown that members of the public were present and could see or hear the remarks.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta passed the order while hearing an appeal filed by a school manager against an Allahabad High Court ruling that had declined to quash criminal proceedings initiated against him under the SC/ST Act.
The dispute traces back to a disagreement between the complainant and the school administration involving his two sons, who were students there. The complainant told police that when he approached the school manager over the matter, the manager and members of the school staff assaulted him and hurled casteist abuses at him. Based on his complaint, police registered a case under the SC/ST Act and eventually filed a chargesheet.
The manager’s wife responded with a cross complaint of her own, accusing the complainant of abusing and assaulting her inside the school office, and alleging that her husband was also assaulted when he stepped in to intervene. A local court took cognisance of the chargesheet arising from this case as well.
Seeking relief, the manager approached the Allahabad High Court asking that the proceedings against him under the special court’s summons be quashed. The High Court declined, observing that a prima facie case existed and that the possibility of the complaint being driven by personal vendetta was not, by itself, grounds to halt the trial.
Before the Supreme Court, the central question was whether the alleged casteist remarks met the legal threshold of having been made within public view, a phrase that determines whether Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) of the SC/ST Act, dealing with intentional insult, intimidation and abuse by caste name of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe member, can be invoked at all.
Arguing for the manager, his counsel pointed out that the alleged incident occurred inside a closed room, and that none of the witness statements on record showed that any member of the public was present in the room or that anyone outside had heard the remarks.
The bench examined earlier precedents on the meaning of public view and reiterated that a place qualifies as being within public view only when members of the public are actually present and can see or hear the offending words spoken to the victim. Four walls enclosing a private conversation, the Court said, do not by themselves satisfy this test, and an incident occurring in such a setting cannot be presumed to have happened in public view merely because it took place on school premises.
The bench then went through the statements of school teachers who had spoken about the altercation between the parties. While the teachers confirmed that some form of dispute had taken place, none of them stated that they were present when the casteist remarks were allegedly made, and none claimed to have heard the abuse themselves. The Court found this to be a critical gap in the prosecution’s case, since it left no evidentiary basis to show that the alleged remarks were made within public view as required by law.
On this reasoning, the Supreme Court quashed the proceedings against the school manager under the relevant sections of the SC/ST Act. The bench clarified, however, that this order applies only to the SC/ST Act charges, and that separate proceedings against the manager under the Indian Penal Code, arising from the same dispute, would continue before the trial court.
The ruling reaffirms a settled principle that the presence and perception of the public, rather than the mere location of an incident, is what determines whether the special protections and stringent provisions of the SC/ST Act come into play. This distinction is significant because it shapes how such complaints are drafted and investigated at the outset, given how heavily prosecutions under the Act depend on establishing this specific element.
