By Binny Yadav
Caste bias in India rarely arrives with a declaration. It survives in silences, in assumptions, in the ease with which certain words are spoken and certain bodies are addressed. For communities historically pushed to the margins, humiliation has seldom required explanation or intent; it has been routine, inherited, and socially sanctioned.
It is against this quiet continuity of prejudice that the Supreme Court’s recent judgment in Keshaw Mahto@ Keshaw Kumar Mahto vs State of Bihar & Anr (2026) must be read. Not as a retreat from the law, but as a moment that compels deeper reflection on how the legal system encounters caste injury in everyday life.
The ruling does not dilute the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. Nor does it misstate the statutory requirements. What it does foreground, however, is an enduring dilemma: how should courts evaluate insult and humiliation when discrimination does not flow from conscious intent, but from a long social memory of hierarchy?
THE CASE AND THE COURT’S FINDINGS
The appeal arose from criminal proceedings in Bihar, where the appellant was accused of abusing and threatening the complainant. The FIR invoked provisions of the Indian Penal Code along with Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) of the SC/ST Act. While the trial court and the High Court allowed the prosecution to proceed, the Supreme Court took a different view.
A bench, comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and Alok Aradhe, held that the essential ingredients of the special statute were absent. Neither the FIR nor the chargesheet alleged the use of caste-based slurs, nor did they claim that the abuse was intended to humiliate the complainant because of caste.
Mere abusive language, the Court reiterated, even when coupled with knowledge of the victim’s caste, does not by itself attract the SC/ST Act. As the Court noted: “Neither the FIR nor the chargesheet contains any whisper of an allegation of insult or intimidation by the appellant herein, let alone one made with the intention to humiliate the complainant.” The proceedings under the SC/ST Act were consequently set aside.
WHAT THE LAW DEMANDS—AND WHY
Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) criminalise intentional caste-based insult, intimidation, and abuse in public view. Judicial interpretation has consistently held that a clear allegation of intent to humiliate on the ground of caste is indispensable.
This insistence is not without reason. The SC/ST Act is a stringent law, carrying serious procedural consequences, including restrictions on anticipatory bail. Courts have therefore been careful to ensure that it is not deployed indiscriminately or as leverage in disputes unconnected with caste discrimination.
Decisions such as Hitesh Verma vs State of Uttarakhand and Prathvi Raj Chauhan vs Union of India reflect this careful balancing—protecting the dignity of marginalised communities while guarding against misuse.
THE DIFFICULTY WITH “INTENT” IN A CASTE SOCIETY
The difficulty lies not in the legal requirement of intent, but in how intent is understood and proved in a society shaped by caste over centuries. Caste prejudice is rarely episodic. It is structural. It operates through habit, language, and social positioning rather than explicit declaration.
Many acts of humiliation draw their meaning from unspoken hierarchies. An insult may not name caste, yet resonate deeply with it. A threat may not articulate social rank, yet rely upon it. To insist that caste humiliation must always be overtly expressed risks overlooking how discrimination actually functions in everyday life.
The absence of explicit words does not necessarily imply the absence of prejudice; it may instead reflect how normalised that prejudice has become.
BETWEEN SAFEGUARDS AND SOCIAL REALITY
Judicial concern over misuse of the SC/ST Act is legitimate. No powerful statute is immune from misapplication, and courts are right to ensure that legal protections are not converted into instruments of coercion.
Yet, an exclusive focus on misuse risks obscuring another reality: caste-based humiliation is often subtle, socially tolerated, and extremely difficult to document. Victims frequently lack the social power, evidentiary support, or institutional access needed to meet high thresholds of proof. Persistently low conviction rates under the Act reflect not just false complaints, but deep structural barriers to justice.
The law thus stands at a fragile intersection—tasked with preventing abuse of its provisions while remaining responsive to injustices that rarely leave clean legal footprints.
THE CASE FOR CONTEXTUAL JUDGING
The SC/ST Act is not merely a penal statute; it is a constitutional response to an exclusionary social order. It recognises that caste-based humiliation carries historical memory and collective injury.
This demands an interpretive approach that allows courts to read intent not only through explicit language, but through context, power relations, and social setting. Such an approach does not weaken safeguards—it strengthens them by aligning legal reasoning with lived reality.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Keshaw Mahto is doctrinally consistent and legally cautious. Yet it also reveals the limits of legal categories when confronted with discrimination that operates silently and habitually.
As courts continue to interpret the SC/ST Act, the challenge will be to ensure that the demand for proof does not become a denial of experience. Caste prejudice may not always speak loudly, but it is rarely absent. The law must learn to listen to what history has made ordinary—and to recognise that for those at the margins, humiliation is seldom accidental and almost never isolated.
—The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist, lawyer and trained mediator
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