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Facing a Case Under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act

Explains the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 -- what conduct it addresses and who it protects -- alongside the specific legal safeguards, bail rules, and remedies the law itself provides for a person named as an accused in such a case.

1. 1. The Act exists to address caste-based atrocities that ordinary criminal law did not adequately reach.
   The Statement of Objects and Reasons accompanying the Act records that members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes continued to be subjected to various offences, indignities, humiliations, and harassment despite constitutional guarantees, and that existing laws, including the Indian Penal Code, were found inadequate to curb such offences. The Act is rooted in Articles 15 and 17 of the Constitution, the latter of which abolishes untouchability and makes its practice in any form a punishable offence. The Act provides for Special Courts for the trial of offences under it and for the relief and rehabilitation of victims.
2. 2. Section 3 lists the specific acts of caste-based atrocity the Act criminalizes.
   Section 3(1) lists a wide range of specific acts -- including forcing a person to eat or drink an inedible or obnoxious substance, causing hurt or injury, sexual exploitation, denying access to a common resource, and using casteist abuse or intimidation. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act, 2015, added further specific offences, including compelling a person to dispose of or carry human or animal carcasses, garlanding a person with footwear, denying access to irrigation facilities or forest rights, imposing a social or economic boycott, and permitting or promoting manual scavenging. Punishment under Section 3(1) ranges from six months to five years' imprisonment with fine; Section 3(2) provides enhanced punishment, including life imprisonment or death in specified circumstances, for certain aggravated offences.
3. 3. An accusation under the Act, for offences occurring after 20 August 2018, requires no preliminary inquiry before an FIR is registered.
   The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act, 2018 (Act 27 of 2018), notified on 17 August 2018 and brought into force on 20 August 2018, inserted Section 18A into the Act. Section 18A(1)(a) provides that a preliminary enquiry is not required for registration of an FIR against a person accused of an offence under the Act, and Section 18A(1)(b) provides that the investigating officer does not require prior approval for arrest. This reversed procedural safeguards a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court had read into the Act in its March 2018 ruling in Dr. Subhash Kashinath Mahajan v. State of Maharashtra (see the judgment summary below).
4. 4. Investigation is required to be completed, and the case is expected to reach the Special Court, within a fixed timeline.
   Rule 7 of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Rules, 1995, as amended by the 2016 Amendment Rules, requires that the investigation be conducted by a police officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police, and that the investigation be completed and the report (chargesheet) filed within 60 days of registration of the FIR. Section 14(1) requires each Special Court, once the case is committed to it, to complete the trial within two months from the date of filing of the chargesheet, as far as possible.
5. 5. Section 18 and Section 18A(2) together bar anticipatory bail under the ordinary law, with a narrow, court-recognised exception.
   Section 18 provides that Section 438 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (anticipatory bail) does not apply to a case involving arrest for an offence under the Act. Section 18A(2), inserted by the 2018 Amendment, adds that this bar applies 'notwithstanding any judgment or order or direction of any Court.' The Supreme Court has held, in Prathvi Raj Chauhan v. Union of India (2020) and reaffirmed in Kiran v. Rajkumar Jivraj Jain (2025), that the bar operates unless the complaint or FIR, on its face, does not disclose the ingredients of an offence under the Act, or is prima facie found to be mala fide on judicial scrutiny -- in which case a court may consider anticipatory bail despite Sections 18 and 18A. Outside that narrow circumstance, the Supreme Court has described the bar as near-absolute.
6. 6. Parliament's 2018 Amendment and the Supreme Court's 2020 ruling together settled the anticipatory-bail question, for now, in favour of the bar.
   After the Mahajan ruling (2018) diluted the Act's original bar on anticipatory bail and introduced a preliminary-inquiry requirement, Parliament enacted the 2018 Amendment Act specifically to restore the pre-Mahajan position through the newly inserted Section 18A. A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Prathvi Raj Chauhan v. Union of India, (2020) 4 SCC 727, upheld the constitutional validity of Section 18A and held that the directions in Mahajan requiring a preliminary enquiry and permitting anticipatory bail more broadly no longer survive, except to the narrow extent recognised in the same judgment (see the step above). This position was applied and reaffirmed by a three-judge bench in Kiran v. Rajkumar Jivraj Jain, 2025 INSC 1067, which set aside a High Court order granting anticipatory bail, holding that the bar is near-absolute wherever the FIR discloses, at first blush, the ingredients of a Section 3 offence.
7. 7. The High Court's power to quash a case remains a separate route, available on settled, narrow grounds.
   The Supreme Court has clarified that the bar on anticipatory bail does not remove a High Court's inherent power to quash a complaint or FIR that is found to be frivolous, motivated by extraneous considerations, or one that discloses no offence at all -- exercised under Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (the successor to Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure), or under Article 226 of the Constitution. This is the same general quashing mechanism, including the categories of cases identified in State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal, that applies to any criminal case; Aadhrix's separate guidance on false or frivolous FIRs describes that general mechanism in more detail. A quashing petition specific to this Act is ordinarily considered only where the material on record, taken at its highest, does not disclose the specific ingredients Section 3 requires.
8. 8. Courts require the alleged insult or act to have occurred 'in public view' and to be connected to the victim's caste, not merely that the victim happens to belong to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe.
   In Hitesh Verma v. State of Uttarakhand, (2020) 10 SCC 710, the Supreme Court held that an offence under the Act is not made out merely because the informant is a member of a Scheduled Caste; there must be an intention to humiliate a member of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe specifically because of that caste or tribal identity. The Court also held that abuse or intimidation occurring inside the four walls of a house, with no member of the public (other than relatives or friends of the parties) present, does not satisfy the requirement that the act take place 'in any place within public view.' The Court found that a property dispute between the parties, without more, does not by itself disclose an offence under the Act.
9. 9. The bar under the Act applies specifically to anticipatory bail; it does not bar regular (post-arrest) bail.
   Sections 18 and 18A bar only the remedy of anticipatory bail under Section 438 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (now Section 482 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023). They do not bar an application for regular bail after arrest, which is considered by the Special Court, the Sessions Court, or the High Court under the ordinary provisions governing bail after arrest -- Section 483 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (the successor to Section 439 of the Code of Criminal Procedure).
10. 10. Section 8 provides certain rebuttable presumptions that operate against an accused at trial.
    Section 8 provides that where the accused was personally acquainted with the victim or the victim's family, the Special Court presumes that the accused was aware of the victim's caste or tribal identity, unless the accused proves otherwise. Section 8 also provides a presumption of abetment against a person shown to have rendered financial assistance to an accused for the commission of an offence under the Act, and a presumption of common intention where the offence is shown to have been committed by a group of persons pursuant to a pre-existing dispute -- both again rebuttable by the accused.
11. 11. The case is required to be tried by a Special Court or, where notified, an Exclusive Special Court.
    Section 14 requires the State Government, with the concurrence of the Chief Justice of the High Court, to specify a Court of Session in each district (or a track within it) as a Special Court to try offences under the Act. The 2018 Amendment substituted a proviso to Section 14 enabling the State Government to specify an Exclusive Special Court, for a district or group of districts, to try only offences under this Act, and to appoint a Special Public Prosecutor exclusively for such a court, in districts where the caseload warrants it. Before the trial reaches this stage, an accused may apply to the Special Court for discharge under Section 250 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (the successor to Section 227 of the Code of Criminal Procedure), where the material on record does not disclose sufficient ground to proceed.
12. 12. An order of the Special Court, including on bail, may be appealed to the High Court within 90 days.
    Section 14A, inserted by the 2015 Amendment Act, provides a right of appeal to the High Court, both on facts and on law, against any judgment, sentence, or order (including an interlocutory order) of a Special Court or Exclusive Special Court. Section 14A(3) provides a limitation period of 90 days from the date of the judgment, sentence, or order, extendable at the High Court's discretion on sufficient cause; a proviso that had separately imposed an outer 180-day limit was struck down by a Full Bench of the Allahabad High Court as inconsistent with Article 21.
13. 13. Whether the bar on anticipatory bail applies in the same terms under the renumbered Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, is a genuinely open question that courts are still working through.
    Sections 18 and 18A(2) of the Act refer, by their own text, to 'Section 438 of the Code' -- meaning the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. Since 1 July 2024, the corresponding anticipatory-bail provision under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, is numbered Section 482, not Section 438. In December 2025, a single-judge bench of the Allahabad High Court held, in a specific case, that the bar under Sections 18/18A does not apply to an application filed under Section 482 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, reasoning that the bar's own text refers only to a provision (Section 438 of the CrPC) that no longer exists under that name, and granted anticipatory bail on that basis. This is a single High Court bench's reasoning, has not been considered or settled by the Supreme Court, and has not been shown, in this research, to have been followed uniformly by other High Courts. How this question is ultimately resolved may materially affect whether the bar described above continues to apply in full.

These are the remedies Indian law provides for this kind of situation -- not a recommendation, and not every remedy will apply to your own facts.

Aadhrix does not decide which route applies to you. This describes the official process as published — consider an advocate for advice specific to your situation.

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