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Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) of the SC/ST Act criminalise intentionally insulting, intimidating or abusing a member of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe by caste name “in any place within public view.”

To establish these offences, three elements are required: the accused should not be a member of an SC or ST community, the act must be intended to humiliate the victim on their caste, and the incident must occur in a place “within public view”. Digital cases turn on the third requirement.

The SC in Hitesh Verma v. State of Uttarakhand (2020) held that “public view” means a place where members of the public can witness or hear the alleged utterance. “If the alleged offence takes place within the four corners of the wall where members of the public are not present, then it cannot be said that it has taken place at a place within public view,” it said.

Last month, in Ramkrishna Chauhan v. State of Uttar Pradesh, Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta quashed proceedings under both clauses against a school manager. The bench held that the requirement “depends upon whether the alleged utterance was made in circumstances in which members of the public could witness or hear it”. It said “the mere fact that the occurrence took place within the premises of a school does not, by itself, satisfy this requirement.”

What the Calcutta HC held

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The petitioner, a member of a Scheduled Caste, complained that two men from general caste communities had “hurled foul, unparliamentary, and casteist expletives targeting his caste identity, religion, God, and family” on Facebook. Police later filed a “Final Report True, No Clue”, saying Facebook, approached through the Cyber Police Station in Kolkata, had not provided user details. The complainant filed a petition against that closure. The Special Court at Alipore rejected the petition, noting that chargesheets had been filed in three other cases brought by the same complainant.

The HC set aside the order, holding that “criminal jurisprudence examines every distinct criminal transaction and occurrence on its own foundational worth and evidentiary matrix,” and described the Special Court’s reasons as “perverse and contrary to the basic tenets of criminal adjudication.”

On the question of public view, the court held that it “transcends physical space into the digital domain”. It noted that the police had seized screenshots and recorded statements during the investigation and thus the “investigating agency cannot throw up its hands reporting ‘no clue’” after a local cyber inquiry failed, “without exhausting specialized State CID cyber-forensic or IP-log tracking protocols.”

What other courts have said

The Kerala HC in Sooraj V. Sukumar v. State of Kerala (2022) said courts cannot interpret the law as if society had remained unchanged since its enactment. It described the SC/ST Act as an “ongoing statute” and observed that statutes may have to be interpreted to accommodate technological advances and that a restrictive reading could defeat the purpose of law which was enacted to prevent caste-based humiliation and discrimination.

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The court noted that the internet had transformed the concept of viewership, with uploaded content capable of being accessed by anyone at any time. It held that “a restrictive interpretation will render the Act nugatory and redundant in technologically advanced times” and that the requirement of “public view” can be satisfied in the digital sphere because a victim becomes “directly and constructively present” each time they access the allegedly offensive content.