SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act — Amendments

Amendment	Year	Description	Impact
Act 1 of 2016	2016	The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act, 2015 (Act 1 of 2016) inserted Chapter IVA, including section 15A on the rights of victims and witnesses. The statutory title uses 2015; the numbered Act was published in 2016 and the amendment came into force on 26 January 2016. Section 15A(3) provides timely notice of proceedings, and section 15A(5) provides a right to be heard in specified proceedings including bail.	Victims and dependents gained express procedural participation, rather than being treated solely as sources of evidence. Hariram Bhambhi applied these rights as mandatory and set aside an inadequately reasoned bail order made without the prescribed hearing. Participation is a right to notice and a hearing, not a power to dictate the judicial result.
Act 27 of 2018	2018	The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act, 2018 inserted section 18A. It removed a special preliminary-inquiry requirement for registering an FIR and a special prior-approval requirement for an arrest if necessary, while reiterating the statutory bar on anticipatory bail. These are amendments to an ordinary statute, not to the Constitution.	The change addressed extra procedural hurdles to enforcing the Act. It did not make arrest compulsory or eliminate judicial examination of whether an offence under the Act is prima facie disclosed. Prathvi Raj Chauhan explains the narrow exception to the anticipatory-bail bar where the complaint does not make out such an offence; that is distinct from deciding contested evidence through a full trial at the bail stage.