Rajasthan High Court declared that the phrases 'Bhangi, Neech, and Bhikari are not caste-indicative'

In a case filed under the Scheduled Caste-Tribe Act, the Rajasthan High Court made an important decision. The High Court declared that terms like Bhangi, Neech, Bhikari, and Mangni are not caste-indicative and removed them from the SC-ST Act.

Actually, the matter is related to the argument with government employees during the action of removing encroachment. After this the matter reached the court. The court removed the sections of the SC-ST Act against the four accused who used these words. Judge Virendra Kumar's bench has given this decision in a 13-year-old case.

It is regarding the Jaisalmer Kotwali police station, where on the 31st day of January 2011, one case was registered under the SC-ST Act. Additionally, Harishchandra with other officials had gone to investigate the encroachment done by Achal Singh. When he was measuring the site in the area, Achal Singh abused government official Harish Chandra, which included words like Mangni, Beggar, Neech, and Bhangi. On this, a case was registered against Achal Singh in the police under the SC-ST Act on behalf of the government officials.

Four persons were accused in the case. All four of them filed a revision challenging the charges under the SC-ST Act. Appellants stated that they were not aware about the caste of the victim.

During the hearing of the case, the appellant's lawyer Liladhar Khatri said that they did not know about the caste of the appellant. There is no evidence that such words were spoken and this incident also happened in public, so the allegation of insulting with casteist words was not considered true in the police investigation.

The High Court held that the words Bhangi, Mangni, Bhikari, and Neech are casteist and not to be made part of the SC and ST Act. The acquittal of the appellant was thus ordered in the case of such an allegation about the use of a casteist word.

The first case was filed at Rajasthan by one Riyaz Hussain, a resident of Jaipur, against BJP MLA Balmukundacharya for allegedly forcing entry into the Imam Baara of Shia community, misbehaving with the Imam, women and children present therein and using indecent language. The magistrate, Jaipur Metropolitan Second Judicial Magistrate-14, will investigate the case thus filed. While concluding the matter, Judge Ayushi Goyal has directed the case to be based on self-investigation, and ordered Riyaz Hussain to present evidence related to the case on the next hearing date of November 28.