Will not dilute provisions of SC/ST Act: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Thursday once again clarified that it would not "dilute" any of the provisions of the stringent Scheduled Castes and Schedule Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

A bench of Justices Arun Mishra, Vineet Saran and S Ravindra Bhat reserved its judgement on a couple of PILs that challenged the validity of the Amendment Act 2018.

Parliament had on August 9, 2018, passed the Amendment Act to overturn the apex court judgement of March 20, 2018. It had nullified the effect of the judgement which had put in certain safeguards like preliminary inquiry before registering FIR and prior approval of the authorities before the arrest of the accused in cases registered under the Atrocities Act in view of "rampant misuse" of the law.

As the judgement caused a huge political furore, the Union government filed a review petition and pressed for restoring the stringent provisions.

On Tuesday, October 1, the top court had recalled the March 20, 2018 judgement.

However, two PILs filed by Prithvi Raj Chauhan and Priya Sharma, which remained pending, came up for hearing before a bench presided over by Justice Mishra on Thursday.

Senior advocates Mohan Parasaran and Gopal Sankaranarayanan appeared for the petitioners. Attorney General K K Venugopal and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta represented the government's side.

After hearing the parties briefly, the bench said, "We are not diluting provisions. We will not pass any long order. We have already said more (in review judgement)."

At the same time, the bench said preliminary enquiry can be undertaken in certain cases as those stood in terms of Lalita Kumari judgement (2013).

During the hearing, a counsel raised questions of the high court entertaining petitions by the accused under Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code to quash the FIRs registered under the Atrocities Act.

"We will not consider this. We cannot curtail rights guaranteed under Article 21 (Life and Liberty) of the Constitution, don't open Pandora's box. Those are related to questions of individual liberty," the bench said.

Among others, the petitioners questioned the validity of the Amendment Act, 2018, saying the provisions made anticipatory bail provisions impossible for an accused which was permitted in certain cases.