Madhya Pradesh’s new police law comes under Supreme Court scrutiny for provisions discriminating against DNT communities

EARLIER THIS MONTH, Criminal Justice and Police Accountability Project (‘CPA Project’), a litigation, research and advocacy based organisation, moved an Interlocutory Application before the Supreme Court in the ongoing suo motu proceedings In Re: Discrimination inside Prisons in India. The proceedings, which operate as a continuing mandamus, stem from the Supreme Court’s decision in Sukanya Shantha v. Union of India (2024), prompted by a 2020 investigation exposing caste-based discrimination in prison manuals. There, the Court had held that caste-based discrimination inside prisons is unconstitutional, recognising that “habitual offender” classifications have historically operated as proxies for caste policing.

The application calls for striking down several provisions of the newly enacted Madhya Pradesh Sudharatmak Sevayen Evam Bandigrah Adhiniyam, 2024, and related police regulations, arguing that they disproportionately criminalise members of Denotified Tribes (‘DNTs’). The Act, which came into force on January 1, 2025, is alleged to re-inscribe caste stigma through intensified surveillance based on a vague definition of “habitual offender”.

Research shows disproportionate impact on DNT communities

Over the years, research conducted by CPA Project has documented systemic over-policing of DNT communities in Madhya Pradesh. One report titled “Drunk on Power: A Study of Excise Policing in Madhya Pradesh” (2021) examined arrest records across twenty districts between 2018 and 2020. It found that 56.35 percent of arrests under excise offences were of persons from marginalised castes, including 11 percent identified as belonging to DNT communities. At Jabalpur’s Ghamapur Police Station, 441 of 509 women arrested under excise offences belonged to the Kuchbandhiya DNT community, with some arrested between 23 and 28 times.

Similarly, another report, “Everyday Policing in Guna, Madhya Pradesh” (2024) analysed 20,705 arrests, 71.7 percent of which involved persons belonging to marginalised communities, while DNTs constituted 15.09 percent (3,126 arrests), far exceeding their share of the population. Most arrests were for petty offences despite the Supreme Court’s direction in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar (2014) to avoid unnecessary arrests in offences punishable up to seven years. 

Such disproportionate outcomes, the application submits, demonstrate how “habitual offender” frameworks reproduce caste criminalisation at scale.

“The Madhya Pradesh law encodes ‘hereditary criminality’, is unconstitutional”: The application argues

The application links the MP Prison Act to the Madhya Pradesh Police Regulations, 1937, which continue to empower police to surveil, document and track communities branded historically as “wandering tribes” or “criminal tribes”. It highlights specific regulations that require the maintenance of registers of criminal tribes, routine monitoring of the movement of wandering gangs, detailed documentation of their habits and appearance, opening of history sheets without conviction, indefinite retention of fingerprints, and continuous surveillance of individuals associated with these communities.