TODAY, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi declared that bail conditions in a series of orders passed by lower courts in Odisha and the Orissa High Court between May 2025 and January 2026 were ‘reflective of caste based bias’. Subsequently, the Court found the bail conditions to be ‘null and void’. The Court had taken suo motu cognizance of the matter, following news reports highlighting such conditions.
The matter largely arises from anti-mining protests that have broken out in Odisha’s Rayagada and Kalahandi districts triggered by plans to open a bauxite mine spanning over 1500 acres in the Sijimali hills, an ecologically sensitive region with crucial livelihood and cultural significance for Adivasi inhabitants in the region.
As per reports, individuals involved in the protests have faced criminalisation through charges of rioting, obstructing officials, damaging property and attacking public servants during protests. While at least forty individuals have faced arrests, since 2023 at least eight bail orders have been issued – one from the Orissa High Court and seven from two judges from the Rayagada district court – attaching problematic bail conditions, such as ‘clean[ing] the premises of the Kasipur Police Station in the morning hour…for two months’. All accused persons affected by such orders have been Dalit or Adivasi persons.
Last year, The Leaflet had reported that the Orissa High Court had issued similar bail conditions in other cases, such as in May 2025, when it directed an accused to clean the premises of the ICICI Bank daily for two months as a bail condition in a bank fraud case, while directing another accused to clean wards and rooms of a hospital as a bail condition in a robbery case.
‘Underlines bias of the Odisha state judiciary’: CJI Surya Kant
The Chief Justice explained that the Court took suo motu notice of the issue since the bail conditions that were imposed were “on the face very obnoxious” and is “bringing a very bad name to the judicial institution.”
Appearing for two accused persons, Kumeshwar Naik and Hiramal Naik, both anti-mining activists in the Sijimali region who were compelled to undertake manual labour as a bail condition, Advocate Rishav Ranjan stated that the Court’s intervention had been timely since other bail matters were listed today and on May 6.
“We will be grateful if My Lords passes any such order [invalidating these bail conditions] because district courts are following the High Court’s order,” Ranjan pleaded.
CJI Surya Kant noted on the outset that the Court was refraining from making any observation on either the legality of the land acquisition or the veracity of the FIRs registered. Notably, it has been widely reported that land acquisition for Vedanta’s Sijimali bauxite mine was obtained through fabricated Gram Sabha approvals. Villagers have testified that no such meetings have taken place, and that signatures were forged, including that of deceased persons.
However, the Court took serious exception to the bail orders issued by Odisha’s courts following protests in the region. The Court noted that after the Orissa High Court’s order in Kumeshwar Naik’s case (who has been accused for offences under Sections 191(2), 191(3), 285, 223, 126(2), 121(2), 132, 109(1), 351(3) and 324(5) of the Indian Penal Code), an order was passed by the Additional District and Sessions Judge, Rayagada in Laksman Naik’s case with similar bail conditions.
“It has been rightly reported that such conditions reflect and underline, albeit unarticulated, [the] bias of the Odisha state judiciary premised on the perception that accused individuals belong to marginalised Adivasi communities and, therefore, it should be justified to subject them to such…unfortunate condition,” the Chief Justice observed.
The Court also noted that no such orders had been passed by the state judiciary in other cases where accused persons came from “privileged, sub-strata” of society. Even if there was no pre-meditated bias, the Court noted that the “condition is so abhorrent, cruel, degrading and unknown to law that it carries the potential to cast a serious aspersion suggesting that Odisha’s judiciary is afflicted by caste-based bias.”
‘Odisha state judiciary regressed to a colonial mindset’: Supreme Court
The Court observed that the Constitution was founded upon the vision of a casteless society which formed the basis of substantive equality. Article 17 specifically dismantled the practice of untouchability and the barriers of caste. Articles 14, 15 and 16 collectively advanced the guarantee of equality before the law and enabled affirmative measures for equal opportunity.
“Over the course of 75 years of constitutional journey,” CJI Surya Kant noted, “the judiciary has transformed the principle of equality into a potent instrument in the hands of the judiciary, in the hands of the citizens, ensuring that the might of the State cannot transgress fundamental rights.”
The Chief Justice referred to E.P. Royappa (1974), where the Court had noted that equality must be antithetical to arbitrariness, and Maneka Gandhi (1978) where the Court had laid down that procedure established by law must be just, fair and reasonable and infused substantive equality into India’s constitutional framework.
Noting that the bail conditions reflected the Odisha judiciary’s regression to a ‘colonial mindset’, the Supreme Court also noted that such conditions struck the dignity of the accused as it proceeded on the premise of their guilt.
It directed courts across Odisha to revoke such offending conditions from their orders and not substitute them with analogous conditions. It also directed that a copy of the order be circulated across the country notifying that such bail conditions should not be imposed ‘under any circumstances.’ The Registrar of the Orissa High Court has been directed to file a compliance report within four weeks “for the limited purpose of compliance.”
Violation of criminal procedure and constitutional framework in Odisha
In September 2025, writing for The Leaflet, lawyer and researcher Amala Dasarathi had argued that the bail orders potentially violated the Constitution’s framework that protects accused persons from punitive pre-trial treatment and caste-based discrimination during the criminal justice process. These conditions also violated proscriptions against untouchability in judicial orders, such as the Sukanya Shantha (2024) judgment which established that rules from state Prison Manuals that assign work to prisoners based on their caste, i.e., cleaning tasks to be done by so-called lower caste prisoners and cooking tasks to be done by so-called upper caste prisoners “reinforce occupational immobility of prisoners who belong to certain castes.”
