75 percent people booked under the SC and ST Act cases: MP Bar Association survey

A functionary of the Madhya Pradesh High Court Bar Association Friday claimed the body was found in a survey that 75 percent of the people booked under the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in 2015-16 were acquitted, showing "rampant misuse" of the law.

All cases under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act filed in the financial year 2015-16 across the three High Court benches and 90 percent district courts in the state were included in the survey, Bar Association president Adarsh Muni Trivedi said.

"It was found that 75 percent of those accused under the SC/ST Act get acquitted. This shows the rampant misuse of the provisions of the Act," he claimed.

Giving other statistics of the survey, Trivedi said that 81 percent of people who faced cases under the SC/ST Act belonged to Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities.

"Fourteen percent of the accused are from upper caste communities while the remaining five percent are from minority groups," he said.

He further informed that 90 percent of all cases under this Act were filed by people belonging to Scheduled Castes and the rest 10 percent were from Scheduled Tribes.

"Most of these cases were heard in district courts. On the basis of merit, the accused in 75 percent of SC/ST Act cases were acquitted," Trivedi said, quoting the survey.

Madhya Pradesh, over the past several days, has been witnessing protests from various communities against the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Bill 2018 which was passed by Parliament in August.

The Supreme Court, on March 20, had placed safeguards on the provisions for immediate arrest under the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

The amendment bill passed in Parliament, however, restored some stringent provisions of the SC/ST Act.

Almost 20,000 people from several Brahmin organizations Friday held protests in Ujjain against the amendments to the SC/ST Act and demanded that they are withdrawn.