The petitioner asked the Supreme Court to strike down the 2018 amendment that restored the stringent provisions of the SC/ST Act, arguing that the bar on anticipatory bail is ‘reverse discrimination’, that the law is prone to misuse, and that a person had spent years in jail on a false case. The Court declined. The amendment, it noted, has already been upheld by a three-judge Bench in 2020, with safeguards built in; individual instances of abuse, however troubling, are not a reason to reopen a law that stands validated. Misuse in a given case, the Court said, is met by the power to quash an FIR or grant bail where no prima facie case exists, not by declaring the statute unconstitutional.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has dismissed a public interest litigation challenging the 2018 amendment to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, which restored the bar on anticipatory bail and dispensed with a preliminary enquiry before the registration of an FIR and with prior approval for the arrest of an accused, holding that the amendment has already been upheld by the Court and does not warrant reconsideration [Brijbhushan Saini and Others v. Union of India and Others].
A Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana declined to entertain the challenge, noting that the amendment had been upheld in Prithvi Raj Chauhan v. Union of India (2020) and that sufficient safeguards had been laid down in that judgment.
The statutory background
The provisions at issue have a well-known history. In Dr. Subhash Kashinath Mahajan v. State of Maharashtra (2018), the Supreme Court had introduced safeguards against what it saw as misuse of the SC/ST Act, mandating a preliminary inquiry and prior approval before arrest, and holding that there was no absolute bar on anticipatory bail. Parliament responded by amending the Act in 2018, inserting Section 18A to dispense with the requirement of a preliminary inquiry before an FIR and with prior approval for arrest, and to reinstate the bar on anticipatory bail. That amendment was then challenged, and upheld, in Prithvi Raj Chauhan in 2020.
The petitioner’s case
Appearing for the petitioners, Advocate Hari Shankar Jain argued that the statutory bar on anticipatory bail amounted to reverse discrimination, that conviction rates under the Act were low, and that the provisions were prone to misuse; he also assailed an alleged distribution of compensation under the Act. He contended that the 2018 amendment could not have validated the original provisions without curing the defects the Court had earlier identified, and that Section 18A was more draconian than the provisions it restored, referring to instances in which persons had spent long periods in jail on allegedly false cases. He urged that the 2020 decision be reconsidered and the law tested afresh against Articles 14 and 21.
What the Court held
The Bench was not persuaded that individual instances of hardship could justify reopening a validated law. Justice Bagchi observed that acts against an individual would not be a good ground to revisit a law upheld by a three-judge Bench, questioning why a decision that had received such approval should be revisited within five years. The CJI added that a case of abuse of the provisions can be addressed through the exercise of judicial powers, and does not mean that the statute itself is bad.
The Court also pointed to the safeguards that operate alongside Section 18A. Justice Bagchi noted that Section 35 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, which requires notice before arrest in certain cases, would be a relevant consideration whenever an arrest is effected under the special law, drawing on the way the Court had interpreted Section 41A of the CrPC in Arnesh Kumar; the two provisions, he indicated, could be read analogously without declaring Section 18A ultra vires. He further referred to a recent decision in which the bar under Section 18A had been read down, so that a mere reference to the SC/ST Act would not automatically rule out anticipatory bail, courts retaining the power to examine whether a prima facie case is made out. Justice Mohana observed that the apprehensions raised had been addressed in the 2020 decision, and that, despite Section 18A, an FIR invoking the Act can be quashed on a case-to-case basis.
On the argument that anticipatory bail should be available to an accused under the Act, Justice Bagchi noted that the restriction reflected the legislature’s wisdom, comparing it to the stringent bail regimes in statutes such as the UAPA and the PMLA, and observing that the Court could not sit in the armchair of the legislature. When the petitioner pressed the compensation argument, contending that the disbursal of funds was, in effect, inviting the lodging of FIRs, the Court did not accept the submission, with Justice Bagchi remarking that such a characterisation was “cruel”. The Bench declined to reconsider the 2020 judgment and dismissed the petition.
Why it matters
The order reaffirms the stability of the SC/ST Act’s stringent scheme and the discipline of precedent that protects it. A statute upheld by a three-judge Bench is not to be reopened whenever a hard case surfaces; the constitutional validity of a law is tested against its terms and object, not against the worst instances of its application. That principle, that abuse in individual cases is a matter for judicial correction rather than a reason to strike down the statute, is the spine of the Court’s refusal, and it echoes the reasoning by which Prithvi Raj Chauhan upheld the amendment while leaving room for case-by-case relief.
What gives the order its balance is the Court’s careful mapping of the safeguards that survive Section 18A. The bar on anticipatory bail is not absolute in practice: as the Court noted, where the allegations do not disclose a prima facie offence under the Act, anticipatory bail is not foreclosed, and an FIR can be quashed; and the arrest safeguards developed in Arnesh Kumar, now reflected in Section 35 of the BNSS, apply even to arrests under the special law. The stringency of the provision, in other words, operates within a framework of judicial checks that guard against the very misuse the petitioner invoked, without the need to disturb the statute.
The decision also reflects the limits of judicial review over legislative policy choices. The choice to impose a stricter bail regime for atrocities against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, like the comparable regimes under the UAPA and the PMLA, is one the Court treated as within the legislature’s competence to make; the judiciary’s role is to police the boundaries of constitutionality, not to substitute its own view of the wisdom of the policy. The SC/ST Act’s protective architecture, enacted to address a persistent social reality, thus remains intact, with the safeguards against misuse to be applied, as the Court reiterated, in the individual case.
Case Title: Brijbhushan Saini and Others v. Union of India and Others [W.P.(C) No. 1211/2026]
Bench: Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana, Supreme Court of India
Appearance: Advocate Hari Shankar Jain for the petitioners.
Status: Petition dismissed. Challenge to the 2018 amendment (Section 18A of the SC/ST Act) declined; the amendment having been upheld in Prithvi Raj Chauhan (2020), the Court found no ground to revisit it, noting that abuse in individual cases can be addressed case by case.