Identifying victims by region or race, a regressive path: Supreme Court

The bench said, "A crime is a crime, and it must be dealt with an iron hand."

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said identifying victims of crime on grounds of race, region, sex and caste would amount to treading a regressive path, as it was hearing a plea in connection with the 2025 killing of Anjel Chakma from Tripura in an alleged racial attack in Uttarakhand's Dehradun.

A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi said, issues ought to be brought before the competent authority through the Attorney General.

Petitioner Anoop Prakash Awasthi, a Delhi-based lawyer, contended that the matter was raised on the floor of Parliament, but lawmakers declined to make any such agency to deal with such hate crimes.

The bench, however, said, "A crime is a crime, and it must be dealt with an iron hand."

The petitioner sought a direction that there should be a nodal agency in states to deal with grievances regarding identity-based discrimination.

Upon this, the bench, however, pointed out that such a mechanism can encourage further divisions based on regional identities.

"The moment we start entertaining litigations where the victims are unfortunately targeted because of their region, the negative message which will be, people will start identifying he is Keralite, Tamilian, Kashmirian. We are not meant to do so. We have a strong federal structure, and we are supposed to be stronger with unity and not to be identified with regions," the bench said.

The petitioner submitted that in the new criminal laws, there was no special provision to deal with such cases.

To this, the court said that it was probably not done keeping in mind the "negative consequences of such a provision."

The court finally disposed of the plea with the liberty to the petitioner to hand over the soft copy of the petition to the office of Attorney General, also along with a copy of this order, to do the needful.

The plea was filed in December, 2025 in after the brutal killing of the 24-year-old MBA student from Tripura due to injuries sustained in a racially motivated attack in the Selaqui area of Dehradun.

Chakma had gone to Dehradun after completing his graduation in Holy Cross School, Agartala, to pursue an MBA. He was stabbed to death in the presence of his younger brother, Michael.