Amnesty International India executive director Aakar Patel writes in Asian Age:

We don’t need judgments that blunt laws

The Indian law already has safeguards against the risk of false cases.

The Supreme Court campaign against the “misuse” of special laws continues. A few days ago, a two-judge bench of justices, A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit, issued new directions to prevent what they say is the “rampant misuse” of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. What these directions are likely to do is gut a law crucial to protecting dalit and adivasi rights.

On the face of it, much of the judgment aims to uphold the fair trial rights of criminal suspects. The court rightly observes that wrongful arrests and detentions violate the constitutional right to personal liberty. It defends the principles of due process and presumption of innocence, which are too often casually ignored in the Indian criminal justice system.