The Supreme Court of India rejected a PIL on discrimination, calling profiling regressive and harmful to unity. A Bench led by Justice Surya Kant with Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M. Pancholi stressed that every crime must face strict action.
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court stated that identifying individuals based on race, region, sex, and caste represents a regressive approach, while declining to entertain a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) aimed at preventing discrimination and violence against citizens from northeastern states and other regions.
A Bench composed of Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justices Joymalya Bagchi, and Vipul M. Pancholi remarked,
“A crime is a crime and it must be dealt with an iron hand,”
They urged Attorney General R. Venkataramani to consider referring the petition to the appropriate authority.
The Bench noted,
“Identifying persons on the ground of race, region, sex, and caste would amount to treading a regressive path after so many years of independence,”
Petitioner Anoop Prakash Awasthi, a lawyer based in Delhi, stated that the matter had been raised in Parliament, but lawmakers chose not to establish an agency to address such hate crimes.
The lawyer highlighted that no one intervened to assist Chakma during the attack.
The Supreme Court declined to hear the PIL, stating,
“As of now, we deem it appropriate that the aforesaid issue ought to be brought before the competent authority.”
Emphasizing that the top legal officer will take necessary action, the Bench concluded,
“The instant writ petition is disposed of with liberty to the petitioner to hand over a soft copy of the petition to the office of the Attorney General, along with a copy of this order,”
Factual Backgrounds:
A public interest litigation was filed on December 28 of the previous year before the Supreme Court, urging immediate judicial action to address what it terms a “continuing constitutional failure” in preventing racially motivated attacks against people from India’s North-Eastern states, in the wake of the brutal assault and subsequent death of Tripura student Angel Chakma in Dehradun, Uttarakhand.
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The PIL, filed under Article 32, highlights that Angel, a final-year MBA student, died on December 26 from severe injuries sustained after being attacked on December 9 in the Selaqui area. According to a complaint filed by his brother, Michael Chakma, the brothers were confronted by a group of youths allegedly intoxicated, which led to an altercation that soon turned violent.
The attackers are said to have abused them with racial slurs and attacked them using sharp weapons. Angel suffered multiple stab wounds, including serious injuries to his neck and abdomen, and was admitted to the ICU at Dehradun’s Graphic Era Hospital, where he later passed away.
Angel’s last recorded words during the confrontation as his final plea for constitutional identity before the violence turned fatal was,
‘We are not Chinese… We are Indians. What certificate should we show to prove that?’
The PIL argues that despite clear indicators of racial hatred, incidents like these are routinely treated as ordinary criminal cases, leading to the erasure of the hate motive and diminishing their constitutional seriousness.
It contends that there is no framework in the initial criminal justice process to identify and treat racial violence as a distinct constitutional offence, which perpetuates impunity.
Citing earlier incidents of 2014 about death of Arunachal Pradesh student Nido Taniam, the plea asserts that Angel Chakma’s killing is not an isolated tragedy but part of a recurring pattern of racial violence acknowledged by the Union government itself in Parliament.
Even after the introduction of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, the petition states that there is still no statutory recognition of hate or racial crimes, no requirement to record bias motivation at the FIR stage, and no specialised investigative or victim-protection mechanism.
The PIL claims that such violence continues to violate the guarantees of equality, dignity, liberty, and fraternity under Articles 14, 15, 19, and 21, undermining the constitutional value of fraternity in the Preamble. It has requested the Supreme Court to issue binding guidelines recognising racially motivated violence as a separate constitutional wrong and to ensure stronger measures for protection and accountability.
According to officials, five accused have already been arrested, while another suspect believed to have fled to Nepal is being traced, with a reward announced for information.
His family seeks capital punishment or, at the very least, life imprisonment for all those involved in the incident. The plea includes the Centre and all the states and Union Territories as parties.