New Delhi: In a petition highlighting a racially motivated attack in December last year that led to the death of Anjel Chakma in Uttarakhand, Supreme Court “Those who attack others because of their appearance, language, race, region or origin must be dealt with with an iron fist,” he said on Wednesday.The CJI’s bench of Justices Surya Kant, Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi expressed reluctance to enter the legislative arena and frame mechanisms under criminal law to prevent communal violence against others based on race, place of origin and language.Petitioner Anup Prakash Awasti stressed that violence against people from northeastern states has been recurring in many parts of the country simply because of their physical features and said they were often racially profiled. “The killing of Angel Chakma was not an isolated incident but part of a long pattern of ethnic violence against citizens of the northeastern states, which includes the death of Nido Taniam in 2014 and multiple attacks on students and workers in the metropolis, a phenomenon that the government formally acknowledged in its parliamentary reply but did not address through any dedicated legislative or institutional framework,” Avasti said.The CJI-led bench said that despite cultural, linguistic and regional diversity, India’s strong federal character built on civic unity cannot be undermined by such crimes and needs to be dealt with with an iron hand.The bench said the petitioner requested the court to lay down guidelines in line with the Visakha judgment to prevent sexual harassment of women at the workplace and to prevent violence against others on the basis of race, region and language until Parliament enacts a law and the government will better deal with the issue.The court asked Awasthi to hand over a copy of the petition to Attorney General R Venkataramani and asked the Attorney General to take up the issue with the relevant authorities of the Union government.
