On Monday (March 9), a Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi expressed agreement during oral observations with the main contention of a public interest litigation on disability rights.

Shaheen Malik, an acid attack survivor and disability rights activist, was behind the petition, which demanded the expansion of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016, to cover victims of the offence of forcible ingestion of acid. Currently, the law recognises as victims only those who have had acid thrown on them, but excludes those forced to swallow it.

Legal gap

The petition identifies a gap in how the RPwD Act defines an acid attack victim. The Act’s schedule categorises acid attack victims under “Locomotor Disability”, defines a victim as “a person disfigured due to violent assaults by throwing of acid or similar corrosive substance.”

Malik’s plea argues this definition “creates an arbitrary distinction based on the method of the attack (i.e., “throwing” of acid) rather than the result of the attack.”

On the other hand, both the Indian Penal Code and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which replaced it in 2024, punish both throwing and administering acid equally. Section 124 of the BNS penalises causing hurt by “throwing acid on or by administering acid”. The petition notes it is “legally incoherent for a remedial welfare law to create a distinction that the State’s own penal law has consciously rejected.”

The petition also points to guidelines issued by the Union government in March 2024 for assessing disabilities under the RPwD Act. These guidelines, the plea states, “primarily focus on external physical disfigurement or loss of limb function caused by acid attacks, with assessment based on visible scarring or mobility impairment.”

Because “grievous and life-altering” internal injuries to the mouth, oesophagus or stomach caused by forcible acid ingestion do not manifest as visible disfigurement, its victims “do not neatly fit into the listed categories”, according to the petition. Ingestion of acid can require lifelong medical care, and even artificial food pipes and feeding tubes.

The petition notes that the guidelines “do not provide specific assessment criteria for internal visceral damage caused by acid attacks,” leaving a lacuna for such injuries.

Impact on victims

Since the RPwD Act uses the word “throwing” and the guidelines focus on external scars, victims of forceful acid ingestion cannot obtain disability certificates from medical boards. Without this certificate, they are excluded from state compensation and rehabilitation schemes.

The petition cites specific state welfare programmes in Haryana, Punjab and Karnataka that provide survivors monthly support of Rs 8,000 but rely on the definition of disability under the Act. The petition states that this “renders them ineligible for a wide range of government schemes that provide financial compensation, free medical treatment, and other rehabilitative support.”

Constitutional questions

The petition argues this exclusion violates Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees equality before the law, and Article 21, which provides the right to life and dignity. Under Article 14, any classification made by a law must provide for a clear distinction and have a rational connection to the law’s objective.

The plea argues that treating victims who had acid thrown on them and those who were forced to ingest it “differently is manifestly arbitrary and unreasonable” because the object of the RPwD Act is to support persons with disabilities, not to regulate the methods of criminal assault.

To fix this, Malik does not ask the court to draft a new law. Instead, she asks the court to interpret the phrase “violent assaults by throwing of acid” in the schedule of the RPwD Act to mean “violent assaults involving the use of acid” to cover “all methods of acid assault”.

The petition also notes that adopting a functional approach to disability, which includes limitations on “major life activities” like eating and digestion, would align Indian law with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Supreme Court proceedings

The Supreme Court issued notice in the case on December 4 last year. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Union government, had assured the court that the competent authority within the government would consider the issues and frame a policy.

The court also took steps to assess the conditions of acid attack victims in general. It directed the Registrar Generals of all High Courts to provide details of all pending acid attack trials.

On January 27 this year, the court noted that 17 High Courts had submitted data showing 198 cases pending in Uttar Pradesh, 160 in West Bengal, 114 in Gujarat, 68 in Bihar and 58 in Maharashtra. The bench requested that the courts expedite these trials.

The top court has also directed state legal services authorities to submit reports on their compensation and rehabilitation schemes. It has ordered all states and union territories to furnish data on acid attacks, specifically asking for “separate details, including particulars of the victims of forceful ingestion/consumption of acid.”

On Monday, it also asked the states and UTs to show cause as to why the court should not order a rehabilitation scheme for employing acid attack survivors in the public sector.