Clinic Caste-Abuse Allegation Was Not In Public View Under SC/ST Act With Only Complainant And Accused Present: Gujarat HC

The petitioners sought to quash an FIR registered at Kankanpur Police Station under specified provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS), and Sections 3(1)(r), 3(1)(s) and 3(2)(va) of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (Atrocities Act).

At the hearing, petitioners’ counsel stated that the challenge was not pressed insofar as it concerned the BNS offences; the Court recorded that the petition would thereafter survive only in relation to the Atrocities Act offences.

The complainant alleged that, after an initial encounter on the way, he went to petitioner No. 1’s clinic. He waited while patients were attended to; after they left, an argument allegedly took place involving the complainant and both petitioners, during which the alleged caste-related abuse occurred.

Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 was invoked as the source of the High Court’s quashing jurisdiction.

Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) of the Atrocities Act require, respectively, intentional insult or intimidation with intent to humiliate a member of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, or abuse of such a person by caste name, in a place within public view; the Court relied on Karuppudayar v. State Rep. by the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Lalgudi Trichy and Others, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 215, which discussed Swaran Singh v. State and Hitesh Verma v. State of Uttarakhand.

The cited principle distinguishes a place that is merely public from one within public view: a private place may be within public view, and remarks inside a building may satisfy the requirement if members of the public are present; conversely, an incident inside a building, without public presence or visibility, does not meet that requirement.

Section 3(2)(va) was also among the invoked Atrocities Act provisions.

The Court found that, according to the FIR itself, the complainant waited until the patients had left the clinic before the alleged altercation, and that only the complainant and the two petitioners were present when the alleged offence occurred.

Applying Karuppudayar and the public-view principles it recited, the Court held that the alleged conduct did not occur in public view or at a public place; it therefore concluded that the allegations under the Atrocities Act could not be sustained.

The judgment’s reasoning identifies the Atrocities Act offences as the basis for quashing, but its concluding order contains an apparent inconsistency about which offences were quashed.

Its reasoning then concluded that the Atrocities Act allegations should be quashed because the incident was not within public view.

However, the operative paragraph instead expressly quashes the FIR qua the BNS offences, while paragraph 7.2 extends interim protection for one month to enable the petitioners to seek bail for the BNS offences.

The judgment thus contains an apparent discrepancy between its stated reasoning and its operative order; the text does not expressly state in the final order that the Atrocities Act offences are quashed. Direct service was permitted.