“Caste that is difficult to cast away:” Supreme Court rules on scope of Section 3(2)(v) of SC/ST Act; intersectional gender violence

Conviction under Section 3(2)(v) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act as it stood before the 2015 amendment, can be sustained as long as caste identity is one of the grounds for the occurrence of the offence, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday (Patan Jamal Vali v. State of Andhra Pradesh)..To deny the protection of Section 3(2)(v) on the premise that the crime was not committed against an SC/ ST person solely on the ground of their caste identity is to deny how social inequalities function in a cumulative fashion, a Bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and MR Shah ruled..“The statute undoubtedly uses the words “on the ground’ but the juxtaposition of “the” before “ground” does not invariably mean that the offence ought to have been committed only on that ground. To read the provision in that manner will dilute a statutory provision which is meant to safeguard the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes against acts of violence which pose a threat to their dignity,” the judgment said..However, a casual link has to be established between the harm suffered and the ground, the Court clarified.The Court was hearing an appeal of a person convicted for rape of a blind Scheduled Caste woman woman..Section 3(2)(v) states that if a person who is not a member of the SC/ST community commits an offence under the Indian Penal Code punishable with imprisonment for a term of ten years or more against a person or property on the ground that such person is a member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe or such property belongs to such member, shall be punishable with imprisonment for life and with fine.The Sessions Judge had convicted the appellant for offences under Section 3(2)(v) of the SC & ST Act and Section 376(1) of the Penal Code and sentenced the accused to life imprisonment for both the offences. The High Court affirmed the conviction and sentence leading to the appeal before the top court..The apex court noted that the interpretation of the provision to mean that the offence should have been committed “only” on the ground that the victim belonged to SC/ST community would dilute the provision.In this regard, the Court adverted to the two earlier judgments in Ashrafi v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Khuman Singh v. State of MP in which the top court had ruled that offence has to be committed “only” on the ground that the victim belonged to SC/ST community.The Court, however, did not refer the above two judgments to a larger Bench since int concluded that the prosecution in the instant case had not led sufficient evidence to prove the ingredients of section 3(2)(v)..Intersectionality.The Court, then proceeded to examine the other striking aspect of the case - intersectionality of the nature of oppression because the victim belonged to an oppressed community and was also disabled.“When the identity of a woman intersects with, inter alia, her caste, class, religion, disability and sexual orientation, she may face violence and discrimination due to two or more grounds. Transwomen may face violence on account of their heterodox gender identity. In such a situation, it becomes imperative to use an intersectional lens to evaluate how multiple sources of oppression operate cumulatively to produce a specific experience of subordination for a blind Scheduled Caste woman,” the Court said..But the limitation of Section 3(2)(v), the Court said is that when the oppression faced by the victim is intersectional in nature, it becomes difficult to establish what led to the commission of offence.“When oppression operates in an intersectional fashion, it becomes difficult to identify, in a disjunctive fashion, which ground was the basis of oppression because often multiple grounds operate in tandem,” the judgment noted..In the instant case, the Court noted that the accused might have been aware of the caste of the victim.“But knowledge by itself cannot be said to be the basis of the commission of offence, having regard to the language of Section 3(2)(v) as it stood at the time when the offence in the present case was committed. As we have discussed above, due to the intersectional nature of oppression PW2 faces, it becomes difficult to establish what led to the commission of offence – whether it was her caste, gender or disability. This highlights the limitation of a provision where causation of a wrongful act arises from a single ground or what we refer to as the single axis model,” the Court said..Effect of 2015 amendment.The Court also noted that Section 3(2)(v) was amended by the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act, 2015, which came into effect on 26 January 2016. By the same, words “on the ground of” under Section 3(2) (v) have been substituted with “knowing that such person is a member of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe”.This has decreased the threshold of proving that a crime was committed on the basis of the caste identity to a threshold where mere knowledge is sufficient to sustain a conviction, the Court said.“The current regime under the SC & ST Act, post the amendment, has thereby facilitated the conduct of an intersectional analysis under the Act by replacing the causation requirement under Section 3(2)(v) of the Act with a knowledge requirement making the regime sensitive to the kind of evidence that is likely to be generated in cases such as the present one,” the judgment noted.However, since Section 3(2) (v) was amended and Clause (c) of Section 8 was inserted by with effect from 26 January 2016 these amendments would not be applicable to the case at hand.Hence, the Court acquitted the accused of the offence under Section 3(2)(v) while upholding the conviction and sentence under Section 376 of IPC..[Read Judgment]