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SC & ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act

SC/ST Women and Intersectionality

A Dalit woman facing violence stands where two roads cross: the violence reaches her as a woman and as a Scheduled Caste member at once, and often as a poor, rural or disabled person too. The law long treated these as separate lanes, gender under the rape and modesty offences, caste under the Act, and a case that fell between them fell through. The 2016 amendment answered with offences written for SC/ST women, a consent rule of their own, and the 'knowing that' test in Section 3(2)(v); the Supreme Court answered in Patan Jamal Vali with the vocabulary of intersectionality. This note covers both: the provisions built for SC/ST women, the case law from Asharfi to Shivkumar, and how courts are told to hear a woman whose disadvantages compound.

Provisions written for SC/ST women

Figure 1: Provisions written for SC/ST women

1. Caste and Gender-Based Violence

  • The pattern. Sexual violence against SC/ST women is often not private lust but public power: punishment for a land claim, a wage dispute, an inter-caste relationship or a family member's defiance. The Act recognises this by treating sexual offences against SC/ST women as atrocities and by aggravating general offences committed with knowledge of the victim's identity.
  • The historical arc. Mathura's case (Tukaram v. State of Maharashtra, 1979), an acquittal in the custodial rape of a young tribal girl, provoked the 1983 rape-law reforms; Bhanwari Devi, a Kumhar social worker gang-raped for stopping a child marriage, gave rise to Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan (1997) and eventually the PoSH Act. Both show gendered violence entangled with caste and power.
  • Sentencing is caste-blind; liability is not. In State of Karnataka v. Krishnappa (2000), a three-judge bench held that the socio-economic status, religion, race, caste or creed of the accused or the victim are irrelevant considerations in sentencing for rape. Caste enters through the Act's own offences and aggravations, not as a sentencing discount or premium.

2. Intersectionality and Patan Jamal Vali

Patan Jamal Vali (2021): how the Court reasoned

Figure 2: Patan Jamal Vali (2021): how the Court reasoned

📖 Patan Jamal Vali v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (2021) 16 SCC 225 (decided 27 April 2021)

Facts: A blind nineteen year old Scheduled Caste woman was raped in her home by a man who worked with her brothers and often visited the family. The trial court and the High Court convicted him under Section 376(1) IPC and Section 3(2)(v) of the Act and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Held: A bench of Dr D.Y. Chandrachud and M.R. Shah, JJ. (per Chandrachud, J.) used the case to bring intersectionality into Indian criminal law: oppressions of caste, gender and disability 'operate cumulatively' and produce a specific experience that single-axis analysis misses, invoking Kimberlé Crenshaw's image of traffic flowing through an intersection. On the pre-2016 text of Section 3(2)(v), the Court held that the evidence did not establish that the offence was committed on the ground of caste and set that conviction aside, while doubting the line of cases that read 'on the ground' as 'only on the ground': adding 'only' inserts a restriction the statute does not contain. It expressly kept the question open rather than referring it. The life sentence under Section 376(1) was upheld.

Ratio: Intersecting disadvantages must inform how courts receive evidence and understand violence, even where a conviction under the Act fails on the statutory test of its time.

  • The directions. The Court issued directions for a disability-inclusive criminal justice system: training of judges through the judicial academies and inclusion of intersectional violence in legal education, trained special educators and interpreters with police-station databases of them, disaggregated NCRB data on gender-based violence against women with disabilities, periodic police sensitisation including the instruction to speak to the disabled person directly rather than the caretaker, and accessible awareness campaigns.
  • What the Court relied on. The judgment noted that NCRB kept no disaggregated data on violence against women with disabilities and drew on field studies of such violence; it did not decide the case on statistics.
  • Applied since. The Madras High Court applied the judgment's intersectional method to a deaf woman athlete denied participation, treating gender and disability as compounding (M. Sameeha Barvin, 2021).
  • Attribution care. The prohibition of the two-finger test belongs to State of Jharkhand v. Shailendra Kumar Rai (2022), not to Patan Jamal Vali.

💡 Analogy: the traffic junction

Crenshaw's image, adopted in the judgment: discrimination flows like traffic through a junction. A woman standing at the crossing of caste, gender and disability can be struck from any direction, or from several at once, and asking which single lane the car came from misdescribes the accident. The Act's 2016 offences and the 'knowing that' test are the traffic lights installed at that junction.

3. Section 3(1)(w): Sexual Offences Written for SC/ST Women

  • The two limbs. Inserted in 2016: (i) intentionally touching a woman belonging to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, knowing that she belongs to it, when the touching is of a sexual nature and without her consent; and (ii) using words, acts or gestures of a sexual nature towards such a woman, knowing that she belongs to it.
  • The consent Explanation. Consent means an unequivocal voluntary agreement, communicated by words, gestures or non-verbal communication, to the specific act. The first proviso is written for the community's reality: an SC/ST woman who does not offer physical resistance is not, for that reason alone, to be regarded as consenting. The second proviso bars any inference from her sexual history, including with the offender.
  • Knowledge, not caste motive. The Delhi High Court has read clause (w) as requiring knowledge of the woman's identity, not proof that the act was committed because of her caste (Prosecutrix R v. State, 2026, relying on Ashabai, 2009); an earlier single-judge view had demanded a reference to caste, so the point should be answered with the clause's own text, which asks for knowledge.
  • False promise of marriage. Where consent to intercourse is vitiated by a false promise of marriage, the offence is rape under the general law (Pramod Suryabhan Pawar, 2019), and, with knowledge of the woman's identity, Section 3(2)(va) attaches the Act (Topic 22).

4. Aggravation by Knowledge: Sections 3(2)(v) and (va)

Section 3(2)(v): the old and the new test

Figure 3: Section 3(2)(v): the old and the new test

  • The old test. For offences before 26 January 2016, Section 3(2)(v) required the ten-year offence to be committed 'on the ground' of the victim's identity. Convictions failed where no separate evidence proved caste as the reason (Asharfi, 2017; Patan Jamal Vali, 2021; Raju, 2025), though the underlying rape convictions stood.
  • The new test. From 2016, 'knowing that such person is a member' suffices, and Section 3(2)(va) applies the Act to the Schedule offences, including the BNS/IPC sexual offences, on the same knowledge basis.
  • Proving knowledge. Section 8(c) presumes knowledge of identity from personal acquaintance with the victim or her family. In Shivkumar (2025 INSC 1231), the accused's frequent visits to the family sustained the presumption, and the Section 3(2)(v) conviction was upheld.
  • Why the change matters for women. Sexual violence rarely comes with a spoken caste motive. The knowledge test reaches the offender who chose a victim he knew to be a Dalit woman, without demanding that the prosecution prove the unprovable.

⚠ Khairlanji: the cost of the old test

In the 2006 Khairlanji massacre, four members of a Dalit family were lynched after they resisted dominant-caste pressure over their land. The atrocity charges did not survive trial, and in 2010 the Bombay High Court, commuting the death sentences to twenty-five years, treated the killings as revenge, not caste hatred. The case is the standard illustration of how the 'on the ground' test filtered caste out of even notorious caste crimes.

5. Hearing the Victim: Credibility and Social Context

  • Her testimony is enough. A victim of sexual violence is not an accomplice; if her evidence inspires confidence, it needs no corroboration (Raju, 2025; Topic 43). In Shivkumar, the consistent testimony of a twelve year old Scheduled Caste girl, with her statement before the Magistrate and the medical evidence, sustained conviction.
  • Social context. Patan Jamal Vali asks judges to understand testimony as it is given from a position of layered disadvantage: delay born of fear and dependence, silence born of shame in a small village, and the absence of resistance are read against that background, and the clause (w) proviso writes the last point into statute.
  • Support in court. Section 15A(2) requires fairness, respect and dignity with due regard to special needs arising from the victim's age or gender or educational disadvantage or poverty; Rule 11(3) gives women victims and witnesses an attendant of their choice for travel; Section 15A(12) allows the help of NGOs, social workers and advocates; the trial of rape is in camera and her identity protected (Topic 45).

6. Relief and Rehabilitation of Women Victims

Support for an SC/ST woman through the case

Figure 4: Support for an SC/ST woman through the case

  • The amounts. The Schedule fixes minimum relief of 5,00,000 rupees for rape and 8,25,000 rupees for gang rape, paid 50 per cent after the medical examination and confirmatory report, 25 per cent at charge-sheet and 25 per cent at the conclusion of the trial. Sexual touching or gestures under Section 3(1)(w) carries 2,00,000 rupees, staged 25, 50 and 25 (Topic 44).
  • Beyond cash. In grave cases, item 46 adds the pension, employment, land, house and education package; the Special Court can order socio-economic rehabilitation during the case (Rule 12(4B)) and relocation (Section 15A(6)(d)).
  • In addition. Rule 12(5), widened in 2018 to cover rape, gang rape, unnatural offences and acid attacks expressly, makes relief additional to compensation under any other law, so the victim compensation scheme under Section 396 BNSS remains open.
  • Enforced. The Vachathi case shows the full frame at work: for the 1992 mass sexual violence against tribal women during a raid, the Madras High Court in 2023 upheld the conviction of 215 officials and ordered 10 lakh rupees to each of the eighteen rape survivors, partly recoverable from the convicts, with Government jobs or self-employment support (Topic 37).

7. Caste-Based Sexual Harassment at Work and Online

  • Two tracks at work. An SC/ST woman harassed at a workplace can pursue the PoSH internal-committee inquiry and a prosecution under Section 3(1)(w) or 3(2)(va) at the same time; the disciplinary and criminal tracks are independent (Topic 47).
  • Online. Sexualised caste abuse on social media can satisfy public view on the prevailing High Court approach, and the post itself, proved with a Section 63 BSA certificate, supplies the words (Topics 21 and 43).
  • Public servants. Harassment by an official invites Section 3(2)(vii) aggravation, and the Special Court can restrain an interfering public servant under the second proviso to Section 15A(8).

8. Quick Revision and Memory Aids

  • 'The junction'. Patan Jamal Vali (2021): caste, gender and disability compound; 'only on the ground' doubted, question left open; Section 376 life sentence upheld.
  • 'Touch and taunt'. Section 3(1)(w)(i) and (ii): touching without consent; sexual words, acts or gestures, each with knowledge of identity.
  • 'No resistance is not yes'. The first proviso to the clause (w) Explanation; the second bars sexual-history inferences.
  • 'Ground before 2016, knowledge after'. Section 3(2)(v); the offence date picks the test; s.8(c) presumes knowledge from acquaintance (Shivkumar, 2025).
  • 'd, k, w, zb'. Parading naked; devadasi dedication; sexual offences; witch-branding: the gendered clauses.
  • 'Five and eight twenty-five, medical first'. Relief for rape and gang rape.

9. Frequently Asked Questions

Did Patan Jamal Vali overrule the "only on the ground" reading?

No. It doubted that reading, saying 'only' adds a word the statute does not contain, but expressly kept the question open. The conviction was set aside on the evidence under the old test.

Must the prosecution prove that a sexual offence was committed because of caste?

Not for offences after 26 January 2016. Sections 3(1)(w), 3(2)(v) and 3(2)(va) ask for knowledge of the victim's identity, and Section 8(c) can presume that knowledge from acquaintance.

Is absence of physical resistance consent?

No. The Explanation to Section 3(1)(w) says an SC/ST woman who does not offer physical resistance is not, for that reason alone, to be regarded as consenting.

Can her past relationship with the accused be used to infer consent?

No. The second proviso bars any inference from her sexual history, including with the offender.

What does the victim receive if the accused is acquitted of the atrocity but convicted of rape?

The rape conviction stands on its own, and scheme compensation under Section 396 BNSS remains available; relief under the Rules follows the case as the Schedule provides.

10. Related Topics and Provisions