The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UN CERD) in its recent findings has expressed grave concerns regarding large-scale violations perpetrated by law enforcement officials against ethnic and ethno-religious groups, and Indigenous and Tribal People, including Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes in India. India has blatantly rejected these findings as unsubstantiated, while highlighting a robust legal framework and sustained efforts to protect disadvantaged communities. These findings expose a fundamental structural contradiction: legislation designed to protect marginalized communities is routinely neutralized by statutory shields that protect law enforcement agencies from criminal accountability.

The primary statute intended to combat caste-based violence, the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, punishes offences of atrocities committed by non-members of the SC/ST community. However, the Act lacks specific provisions prescribing aggravated measures or independent prosecutorial mechanisms for atrocities by police. The Status of Policing in India Report (SPIR) 2025 noted that the majority of police torture victims are from these marginalised communities. The SPIR also found that caste and religious affiliation often play a decisive role in shaping police perceptions and influencing their actions. The statutory vacuum provides victims with no remedy but to resort to general codes.

While Article 15 of the Indian Constitution prohibits discrimination, public law remedies under writ jurisdiction are inherently limited and can merely mandate departmental inquiries, quashing of arbitrary arrest or illegal detention orders, or financial compensation. For criminal prosecution under the general statute, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the victims have to encounter the formidable barrier of Section 218 of the procedural statute, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, which mandates prior sanction from the concerned State or Central Government for prosecuting a public servant. It has been reported that investigations into the acts of public servants have historically been heavily delayed due to pending requests for prosecution sanctions. Therefore, such provisions result in granting de facto immunity to offending officers.

The CERD has also noted excessive use of force, extra-judicial killings, and sexual violence committed against ethnic groups during law enforcement operations under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), 1958. A similar mechanism of institutionalized impunity exists under Section 6 of the AFSPA, which acts as a procedural bottleneck by mandating sanction from the Central Government to prosecute the armed forces for acts done under the Act. The Supreme Court in the case of Extra Judicial Execution Victim Families Association v. Union of India (2016) ordered investigations into the allegations of fake encounters of the ethno-religious community of Manipur committed by the armed forces. However, almost a decade after the judgment, the court-appointed commission has found six encounters to be unlawful, but their prosecutions have been stalled for want of sanction.

The procedural shield in the AFSPA has historically exacerbated gendered and ethnic violence, enabling systemic sexual abuse against ethnic women in disturbed areas. In 2004, women of Manipur, mainly the Meitei community, protested naked against incidents of sexual violence by the armed forces, holding banners reading “Indian Army Rape Us”. Incidents of sexual violence against women from the State’s ethnic communities have continued to surface during subsequent episodes of unrest, underscoring how little the underlying accountability structure has changed in the two decades since the protest.

These instances reveal that caste-based discrimination, ethnic cleansing through extra-judicial killings, and sexual violence on marginalised women by state actors are not isolated operational errors; they are structural outcomes of a legal architecture that prioritizes state immunity over victim justice. Therefore, the provision of prosecution sanction should be waived for the offences of extra-judicial killings and sexual violence by law enforcement officials. These are offences heinous enough that the ordinary justification for protecting public servants from vexatious prosecution simply does not hold.

Consequently, the government should adopt CERD’s core recommendations, crucially, establishing Police Complaints Authorities in all states and union territories, and conducting prompt and impartial investigations into allegations of human rights abuses against ethnic and tribal communities. India’s blanket rejection of the findings as “unsubstantiated allegations” falls flat when contrasted with the internal records, including domestic reports and judgments. Thus, rather than adopting a stance of denial, India must engage with these findings constructively by closing procedural loopholes and building a victim-centric legal framework.