Parading the eyewitness: Caste atrocity and the Test Identification Parade
| Published date | 01 January 2025 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13657127241236209 |
| Author | Achintya Anita Gurumurthy |
| Date | 01 January 2025 |
Parading the eyewitness: Caste
atrocity and the Test Identification
Parade
Achintya Anita Gurumurthy
O.P. Jindal Global University - Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat Narela Road, Near Jagdishpur
Village, Sonipat, Haryana 131001, India
Abstract
The study of the Test Identification Parade (TIP) within Indian evidence law must be contex-
tualised considering the intensification of atrocities and brutalities against oppressed caste
communities in India. Despite the existence of a separate law –Scheduled Caste and
Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 –to adjudicate caste-based atrocities,
its implementation has been met with severe obstacles. Studying how evidentiary practices
encounter the Act reveals how the law of evidence, too, participates in the playing out of a
caste crime. It is in this regard that the discussion surrounding the Test Identification Parade
must be infused with a political character, surfacing the power relations and structural aspects
surrounding testimony and memory within crimes. Through the TIP, evidence law constitutes
the nodal site upon which the dominant caste police and judiciary collude to deprive margin-
alised castes of just outcomes. This piece examines the jurisprudence of the TIP in caste atro-
cities judgments, in order to investigate the various ways in which the law plays out a caste
atrocity.
Keywords
Bathani Tola Massacre, caste atrocity, evidence, eyewitness testimony, test identification
parade, trustworthy witness
The police are drawn from the ranks of the caste-Hindus. The Magistracy is drawn from the ranks of the
caste-Hindus. The police and the magistracy are the kith and kin of the caste-Hindus. They share the senti-
ments and the prejudices of the caste-Hindus against the Untouchables.
Ambedkar (2019b)
Corresponding author:
Achintya Anita Gurumurthy, O.P. Jindal Global University - Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat Narela Road, Near Jagdishpur Village,
Sonipat, Haryana 131001, India.
Email: achintyaanitaguru@gmail.com
Article
The International Journal of
Evidence & Proof
2025, Vol. 29(1) 3–19
© The Author(s) 2024
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/ 13657127241236209
journals.sagepub.com/home/epj
Introduction
In September 2020, the police in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh hurriedly cremated the body of a
19-year-old woman who had been gang-raped and murdered (Ara, 2023). The victim in this case was a
young Dalit (oppressed caste) woman who had battled for her life for multiple days in a government hos-
pital in Delhi and had died succumbing to her injuries (Sinha, 2020). The gang rape that took place in Bul
Garhi, a small village near Hathras in Uttar Pradesh, revealed the extraordinary impunity and protections
doled out to perpetrators of caste atrocities in modern India. Despite her tongue being cut by the assailants
and her spinal cord and neck being severely injured, the woman had unequivocally named her assailants
one by one before the magistrate, testifying to having been raped by them (Ara, 2023).
However, earlier, the First Information Report (FIR) filed by the police had not utilised the provisions
on rape and had to be indicated a week later, after the victim’s statement to the magistrate. In fact, they
had refused to file the case –tormenting the victim and her family to establish the crime, as she slipped in
and out of consciousness (Sinha, 2020). The local police had refused to investigate rape charges, and the
forensic examination that she was put through was used to establish that no rape had taken place.
Furthermore, following the incident, the local police falsely categorised the village as a containment
zone –barricading the entrance and preventing any reporters or anti-caste activists from documenting
the crime. Siddique Kappan, a Muslim journalist who had made his way to the village, was prevented
from reporting on the incident, and was arrested under one of India’s worst anti-terror laws. He spent
28 months in jail on terror charges without undergoing any trial (Tantray and Singh, 2023).
The illegal cremation of the victim’s body took place without the family’s permission around 2.30 am
on September 30, a day after the death. When the case reached the stage of trial in a special court, it was
held that neither rape or murder could be established, due to the lack of evidence. The family continued to
receive threats of violence and murder from dominant caste groups, while suffering through profound
injustices. The UP Chief Minister Adityanath –who is a Hindu religious priest –made false assurances
of employment and housing to the family, never delivering on either (Ara, 2023).
The Hathras instance is one caste atrocity in a lengthy history of such brutalities, perpetrated by dom-
inant caste groups against oppressed caste communities. The continued injustices –from police villainy
to judicial horror –reveal the necessity of exploring the continuous killing and death that is part of the life
of a caste atrocity, and the several stages through which it passes.
The study of the Test Identification Parade (TIP) within Indian evidence law must be contextualised
considering the intensification of atrocities and brutalities against oppressed caste communities in India
(DHRDNet, 2020). Despite the existence of a separate law –the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe
(Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (Prevention of Atrocities Act/POAA) –to adjudicate caste-based
atrocities, the implementation of it has been met with severe obstacles. Studying how evidentiary prac-
tices encounter the POAA will reveal how the law of evidence, too, participates in the playing out of a
caste crime. It is in this regard that the discussion surrounding Test Identification Parade (TIP) must be
infused with a political character. It is important to surface the power relations and structural aspects sur-
rounding testimony and memory within crimes. The TIP relies on the creation of a ‘trustworthy witness’,
which opens up discussions regarding who qualifies as such. Looking at the figure of the trustworthy
witness in caste atrocity cases helps to expose the inner tensions in evidence law, and reveal how
proof plays a defining role in the unfurling of the adjudication of a caste crime. The TIP thus marks
an insidious instance by which evidentiary frameworks are often manipulated against vulnerable caste
groups.
Caste plays a defining role in social relations in South Asian society. It is a social system that is pre-
mised on a hierarchy of ‘graded inequality’(Ambedkar, 2019c: 106), with dominant oppressor castes
subordinating and exploiting communities that are lower in the hierarchy. In Hindu society, castes are
4The International Journal of Evidence & Proof 29(1)
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