Kerala HC Sentences 12 Accused to Life Imprisonment in Madhu Tribal Lynching Case, Applies SC/ST (PoA) Act's Mandatory Sentence

The Kerala High Court upgraded convictions in the 2018 Attappadi lynching death of Madhu, a tribal man, sentencing 12 accused to life imprisonment under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and holding that the mandatory sentence under Section 3(2)(v) left no room for judicial discretion.

A Division Bench of the High Court of Kerala, comprising Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan V and Justice K.V. Jayakumar, on 25 May 2026 substantially enhanced the sentences in the case arising from the death of Madhu, a 27-year-old tribal man from the Mudugar community of Attappadi, who was beaten, stripped, paraded, and filmed by a mob on 22 February 2018 before dying the same day. The trial court at Mannarkkad had convicted 14 of 16 accused for culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304 Part II of the IPC and sentenced them to seven years' rigorous imprisonment. The High Court, finding that the ingredients of Section 3(2)(v) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 were satisfied, held that the mandatory sentence of imprisonment for life applied and that no residual discretion remained. Twelve accused were sentenced to life imprisonment. The conviction of Accused No. 16 was modified, and the acquittals of Accused Nos. 4 and 11 were maintained.

The Incident and the Trial Court's Findings

Madhu was a resident of Chindakki Ooru, Mukkali, in Palakkad district. He belonged to the Mudugar Scheduled Tribe, suffered from a mild mental illness, and lived a nomadic life in the Silent Valley Reserved Forest area. He would periodically come down from the forest and take food from shops at Mukkali without the owners' permission. This conduct had irritated several local traders and residents.

On 22 February 2018, at around 12.15 p.m., information about Madhu's presence in the Ajmudi forest area within the Vandikkadavu Teak Plantation was passed by mobile phone among the accused. A group assembled and entered the reserved forest, trekking nearly two kilometres to a rocky outcrop called Andiyallachaal. There, they forcibly apprehended Madhu, stripped him, tied his hands behind his back with his own dhoti and later with a zip cord, placed a heavy sack of rice on his shoulders, and repeatedly punched and kicked him. Several accused recorded the assault on their mobile phones. The 8th accused circulated the videos on social media. The group then forced Madhu, half-naked and bound, to walk nearly three kilometres along a public road to Mukkali Junction.

At Mukkali Junction, near Sreerag Bakery Cool Bar, further accused joined the assembly. Madhu was made to sit near the offering box of Ponmala Dharmasastha Temple. The 1st accused, Hussain, arrived separately and is alleged to have stamped forcefully on Madhu's chest as he sat against the temple wall, causing his head to strike the wall. Police arrived at around 3.00 p.m. and took Madhu into custody. He became unresponsive in the police jeep and was declared brought dead at Agali Community Health Centre at approximately 4.15 p.m. The postmortem, conducted on 24 February 2018 at Government Medical College Hospital, Thrissur, recorded 44 injuries and concluded that the death was homicidal.

All 16 accused stood trial before the Special Court for offences under the SC/ST (PoA) Act at Mannarkkad in SC No. 265 of 2018. They were charged under Sections 143, 147, 302, 323, 324, 326, 342, 364, 367, 368, and 294(b) read with Section 149 of the IPC, and under Sections 3(1)(d), 3(1)(r), 3(2)(v), and 3(2)(va) of the SC/ST (PoA) Act. The trial court acquitted Accused Nos. 4 and 11 of all charges. It convicted the remaining 14 accused for culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304 Part II read with Section 149 IPC, along with offences under Sections 326, 367, and 3(1)(d) of the SC/ST (PoA) Act, and sentenced them to seven years' rigorous imprisonment for the principal offence. Accused No. 16 was convicted only under Section 352 IPC and sentenced to three months' simple imprisonment. The trial court acquitted all accused under Section 302 IPC and under Sections 3(2)(v) and 3(2)(va) of the SC/ST (PoA) Act.

Seven appeals came before the High Court: five by different groups of accused seeking acquittal, one by the State, and one by Malli, the mother of Madhu, as the de facto complainant. The State and the victim challenged the acquittals of Accused Nos. 4 and 11, the downgrading of the offence from Section 302 to Section 304 Part II IPC, the lesser conviction of Accused No. 16, and the failure to apply Sections 3(2)(v) and 3(2)(va) of the SC/ST (PoA) Act.

Whether the Death Was Murder or Culpable Homicide

The State and the victim pressed for conviction under Section 302 IPC, arguing that the trial court had applied the wrong legal test. They relied on Virsa Singh v. State of Punjab to contend that the relevant inquiry was whether a bodily injury was intentionally inflicted and whether that injury was, objectively assessed, sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death — not what the accused subjectively intended to achieve. They also urged that Clause fourthly of Section 300 IPC was attracted, given that a mentally ill, malnourished man was subjected to sustained mob violence over several hours, inflicted with 44 injuries, denied medical care, and forced to walk three kilometres in a deteriorating condition.

The trial court had concluded that the common object of the unlawful assembly was to apprehend Madhu and hand him over to the police, not to murder him, pointing to the fact that the 3rd accused had called a police officer in advance and that no single act was individually sufficient to cause death. The High Court examined this reasoning in the context of the evidence on record, including the postmortem findings and the medical evidence of PW86 that death would occur only after brain oedema progressed over two to three hours.

The High Court maintained the conviction under Section 304 Part II IPC rather than Section 302 IPC, but the significance of the judgment lies in what followed on sentence.

The SC/ST (PoA) Act: Knowledge of Tribal Identity and the Mandatory Sentence

The trial court had acquitted all accused under Sections 3(2)(v) and 3(2)(va) of the SC/ST (PoA) Act on the ground that there was no evidence to establish that the accused knew of Madhu's tribal identity at the time of the incident. It held that the motive was the belief that Madhu had committed theft, not his caste identity, and that such knowledge could not be inferred from video footage or general circumstances alone.

The High Court disagreed. It noted that Section 8 of the SC/ST (PoA) Act, as amended in 2016, provides that once the prosecution establishes that an offence under the Act has been committed against a member of a Scheduled Tribe, the court shall presume that the accused had the requisite knowledge of the victim's tribal identity unless the contrary is proved. The trial court had itself convicted all 14 accused under Section 3(1)(d) of the Act for parading a member of a Scheduled Tribe in a semi-naked condition through a public place. None of the accused had offered any evidence to rebut the statutory presumption. In those circumstances, the High Court held that the charges under Sections 3(2)(v) and 3(2)(va) were made out.

The accused were long-term residents and traders in Mukkali, a town within one of the most well-known Scheduled Tribe-dominant areas in Kerala. Several had prior encounters with Madhu. Accused No. 16 had been cited as a witness in a prior theft case involving Madhu and had identified him in CCTV footage in that investigation. The 3rd accused, when calling the police, referred to a person found in the Aandiyallachaal forest — a location within the tribal belt. The High Court held that the combination of these facts, together with the unrebutted statutory presumption, established the knowledge ingredient.

Section 3(2)(v) of the SC/ST (PoA) Act provides that a person who commits any offence under the IPC punishable with imprisonment for a term of ten years or more against a person, knowing that such person is a member of a Scheduled Tribe, shall be punishable with imprisonment for life and with fine. The accused argued that Section 304 Part II IPC carries only a maximum of ten years and therefore does not satisfy the “ten years or more” threshold. The High Court rejected this, holding that a maximum of exactly ten years squarely satisfies the threshold. It then held that once the ingredients of Section 3(2)(v) are established, the sentence of imprisonment for life is not a matter of discretion: “The sentence of imprisonment for life is not a choice this Court makes, but it is what the law insists and commands.”

The bench observed that the SC/ST (PoA) Act, being a special statute enacted for a specific protective purpose, overrides the general sentencing discretion available under the IPC and the Code of Criminal Procedure. It extracted the Statement of Objects and Reasons of the 1989 Act, noting that Parliament had deliberately chosen to remove judicial discretion in such cases as a conscious policy decision to treat atrocities against members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes with special severity. The bench cited the Supreme Court's observations in State of M.P. v. Ram Krishna Balothia and Patan Jamal Vali to the effect that the enhanced punishment under the Act is restorative of constitutional dignity.

The Acquittals of Accused Nos. 4 and 11, and the Conviction of Accused No. 16

The State and the victim challenged the acquittal of Accused No. 4 (Aneesh), who had been present throughout the incident at Mukkali Junction and whose mobile phone contained three photographs and one video of Madhu taken during the assault. EXIF metadata confirmed the time and device. Facebook business records and internet protocol detail records were produced to establish that images from his phone had been circulated online. The trial court had acquitted him on the ground that taking photographs fell outside the common object of the unlawful assembly, which it characterised as apprehension and assault.

The State argued that this reasoning was flawed: Section 149 IPC fastens liability for every act done in prosecution of the common object, or which members knew was likely to be committed, and the common object as found by the trial court itself included public humiliation and degradation. The High Court, however, maintained the acquittal of Accused No. 4.

The acquittal of Accused No. 11 (Abdul Kareem) was also maintained. The trial court had found that while he was visible in CCTV footage at Mukkali Junction throughout the relevant period, no overt act of assault, wrongful confinement, or verbal abuse had been proved against him. The allegation that he had called Madhu a thief in public was not supported by oral testimony, and the CCTV footage carried no audio. The trial court had held that a passive bystander who joins a gathering without sharing the common object cannot be made vicariously liable under Section 149 IPC.

The conviction of Accused No. 16 (Muneer) was modified. The trial court had convicted him only under Section 352 IPC for a single act of criminal force and sentenced him to three months' simple imprisonment. The High Court found that the video evidence showed him deliberately walking up behind Madhu and kicking him on the back. It modified his conviction to Section 323 IPC read with Section 3(2)(va) of the SC/ST (PoA) Act and sentenced him to one year's simple imprisonment with a fine of Rs. 1,000.

The Defence Case and the Electronic Evidence

All 16 accused maintained that Madhu was alive and uninjured when handed to the police at Mukkali at approximately 3.30 p.m. and that the 44 injuries found at postmortem were inflicted by police personnel either in the jeep during transit or at Agali Police Station. The defence mounted a detailed challenge to the investigation: no arrest memo was prepared at Mukkali; the FIR was registered manually under Section 174 CrPC rather than as a cognizable offence FIR under Section 154; the FIS recorded by PW83 stated that Madhu himself had named his attackers and given their phone numbers, which the defence argued was impossible for a dying, mentally ill man with brain oedema; and the CCTNS entry at Agali Police Station recorded that Madhu had died “while being brought to Agali Police Station.”

The defence also challenged the claim of a power failure that was said to have necessitated manual FIR registration, producing evidence from KSEB engineers and interruption registers showing no complaint of power failure at Agali Police Station on the relevant date.

On electronic evidence, the defence argued that PW95, the forensic expert from the State Cyber Forensic Laboratory, was not a notified examiner under Section 79A of the Information Technology Act and that his evidence was therefore inadmissible. The defence also challenged the chain of custody of mobile phones, noting that the phone of Accused No. 5 was received at the State Forensic Science Laboratory only on 27 March 2018, approximately 32 days after the incident.

The trial court had admitted the electronic evidence, relying on certificates under Section 65B of the Evidence Act and the principles in Mukesh & Ors. v. State for NCT of Delhi & Ors. and Arjun Panditrao Khotkar v. Kailash Kushanrao Gorantyal. The CCTV footage from multiple sources — Anavai Forest Station, Ponniyammal Gurukulam, and Sreerag Bakery — corroborated the timeline of events. The Q7 file from Accused No. 9's phone, the Q6 file from Accused No. 5's phone, and the Q5 file from Accused No. 8's phone collectively showed the apprehension in the forest, the tying of Madhu's hands, the placing of the sack on his shoulders, and the parading through the forest and along the Silent Valley road. The High Court, after examining the evidence, rejected the custodial torture theory.

The Court's Observations on the Prologue and the Sentence

Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan V, writing the common judgment, opened with a reference to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's address to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949, in which Ambedkar warned of the contradiction between political equality and social and economic inequality. The bench observed that the conflict Ambedkar described “is still alive in Indian public life today” and that the facts of this case were proof of it.

On sentence, the bench observed that Madhu had stolen food because he was hungry, that his life had been reduced by illness, poverty, and social abandonment to its most fragile condition, and that the men who surrounded him had vehicles, mobile phones, shops, and the power of social dominance. It noted that the trial court had itself described this as “the first mob lynching case in God's Own Country” and had expressed the hope that it would be the last.

The bench held that the sentence of imprisonment for life under Section 3(2)(v) of the SC/ST (PoA) Act was not a choice the court was making but what the law commanded. It added that the sentence was addressed not only to the convicted accused but also to every person who was present at Mukkali Junction that afternoon and looked away, to every witness who watched a CCTV recording of themselves and pleaded ignorance, and to every locality that believes it may constitute itself into a village court and pronounce its own justice.

Outcome

The High Court, by its judgment dated 25 May 2026 in CRL.A Nos. 601, 598, 602, 604, 661, 676 of 2023 and CRA(V) No. 27 of 2024, passed the following directions:

Accused Nos. 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, and 15 were sentenced to imprisonment for life and a fine of Rs. 2,00,000 each for the offence under Section 304 Part II read with Section 3(2)(v) of the SC/ST (PoA) Act read with Section 149 IPC; imprisonment for life and a fine of Rs. 50,000 each for the offence under Section 326 read with Section 3(2)(v) of the SC/