Gunjan v. State NCT of Delhi
Supreme Court of India2026 INSC 468Bench: Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and Justice N.V. Anjaria
The Supreme Court held that the expression 'place within public view' under Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 must be interpreted functionally and not merely geographically. A location that is otherwise private in character will nevertheless qualify as a 'place within public view' if, at the time of the incident, independent members of the public not belonging to the family or household of the accused or the victim were actually present and were in a position to witness, see or notice the occurrence. Conversely, a purely private space such as the interior of a residential house, where no person outside the immediate family was present and where the alleged caste-based abuse was not exposed to any external public gaze, cannot satisfy the statutory threshold, however grave the language used. The Bench took pains to clarify that the distinction is not between 'public place' (a phrase deliberately not used by Parliament) and 'private place', but between visibility and invisibility to the wider community, because the gravamen of Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) lies in the public humiliation and stigmatisation of a member of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe community. Accordingly, in the absence of any specific averment in the FIR or charge-sheet that members of the public were present and witnessed the incident, the foundational ingredient of the offence is missing and charges framed under those provisions are liable to be quashed in exercise of the High Court's jurisdiction under Section 482 CrPC / Section 528 BNSS, 2023.