The Supreme Court said that if a person belonging to Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe is insulted without naming his caste, then it will not be a crime under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
A bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Mishra passed this order while granting anticipatory bail to Shajan Scaria, editor of an online Malayalam news channel, who was booked under sections 3(1)(R) and 3(1)(U) of the 1989 Act.
He was accused of calling CPM MLA from Kunnathunad PV Srinijan, who belongs to SC community, a mafia don. In this case, the trial court and the Kerala High Court had refused to grant him pre-arrest bail.
The court said that the video has nothing to do with the people of SC/ST community
Advocates Siddharth Luthra and Gaurav Agarwal presented arguments on behalf of the accused Scaria. Accepting this, the Supreme Court said that every deliberate insult and threat to a member of the SC/ST community will not be considered a caste-based insult.
We did not find anything to prove that Scaria tried to promote enmity or hatred against the SC/ST community in the YouTube video. The video has nothing to do with SC or ST members. His target was only the complainant (Srinijn).
So what will be considered caste-based insult…
Writing the 70-page judgment, Justice Pardiwala said that only those cases where deliberate insult or threat is given are related to the practice of untouchability or to prove the superiority of the upper castes over the lower castes/untouchables. These can be termed as insult or threat under the 1989 Act.