Vidhara

The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989

§14Special Court and Exclusive Special Court

(1) For the purpose of providing for speedy trial, the State Government shall, with the concurrence of the Chief Justice of the High Court, by notification in the Official Gazette, establish an Exclusive Special Court for one or more Districts: Provided that in Districts where less number of cases under this Act is recorded, the State Government shall, with the concurrence of the Chief Justice of the High Court, by notification in the Official Gazette, specify for such Districts, the Court of Session to be a Special Court to try the offences under this Act: Provided further that the Courts so established or specified shall have power to directly take cognizance of offences under this Act. (2) It shall be the duty of the State Government to establish adequate number of Courts to ensure that cases under this Act are disposed of within a period of two months, as far as possible. (3) In every trial in the Special Court or the Exclusive Special Court, the proceedings shall be continued from day-to-day until all the witnesses in attendance have been examined, unless the Special Court or the Exclusive Special Court finds the adjournment of the same beyond the following day to be necessary for reasons to be recorded in writing: Provided that when the trial relates to an offence under this Act, the trial shall, as far as possible, be completed within a period of two months from the date of filing of the charge sheet.]

State amendments

This section has been amended in its application to Karnataka. The text above is the central provision and is what applies everywhere else — these amendments are law only in the State that made them.

Reproduced from the same official PDF as the section above, as the amending Act words it — not a consolidated State version of the section. Check the source before relying on it.

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Source & version

Official text: India Code (official)

Official India Code text: The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, English PDF (bitstream 123456789/1920/1/aA1989-33.pdf, 370,806 bytes, sha256 b52783c516d99d3c...) fetched directly from indiacode.nic.in (Akamai edge, DNS via dns.google) on 2026-08-03. Extracted via pdftotext 26.07 -bbox and the @nexlex/ingest inline parser. Automated parse; footnotes and amendment history excluded. Spot-verified against the PDF; full clause-level proofread pending.

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