Samridh Chaturvedi is a JURIST correspondent and a third-year law student at the School of Law, Christ (Deemed to be University) where he covers legal, policy, and human rights developments in India.
On June 11 2026, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court delivered a bail order that extends quite a bit further than its immediate facts. In the case Saravanan v. The State of Tamil Nadu (Crl.A(MD) No. 277 of 2026), Justice B. Pugalendhi allowed a bail application to move forward for Saravanan—the serving police Sub-Inspector, and also the father of the primary accused in an honour killing case—using the moment to add a pointed judicial commentary about how caste based violence keeps showing up in Tamil Nadu, and throughout Indian society in general. The Saravanan case involved a bail appeal heard under Section 14-A(2) of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. Even though the judgment grants relief to a man accused of abetting a gruesome killing, it reads in large part like a direct criticism of a social setup that makes those killings possible in the first place.
The events underlying the case unfolded on July 27, 2025, in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. Kavin Selvaganesh, a 27-year-old software engineer and a member of the Hindu Devendra Kula Vellalar community, was hacked to death by the main accused—the brother of a woman with whom Kavin was reportedly in a relationship. The woman’s family belonged to the Hindu Maravar community. What made the case stand out was the backgrounds of the accused. The woman’s father, Saravanan (the second accused), and his wife were both serving as police Sub-Inspectors at the time of the incident. According to the prosecution, Saravanan, after learning of the killing from his son, went to the crime scene. There, he allegedly provided the attending constable with misleading information about the deceased’s caste identity. Furthermore, he is accused of helping erase evidence by instructing his son to dispose of the victim’s clothing, cell phone, and even the vehicle’s number plate.
To understand why this matter lands in such a very uncomfortable mix of law and daily social life, some background is needed. The phrase “honour killing”—used for killings carried out by family members of someone who is thought to have shamed the household, usually by having a relationship with someone across caste or religious lines—is not recognised or defined as its own separate crime under Indian criminal law. These types of cases are usually brought under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023—which has essentially replaced the Indian Penal Code—along with applicable bits of the Prevention of Atrocities Act, but only if the victim is from a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe. Here, Saravanan was charged under Sections 203(1), 238(a), 249(a), and 318(3) of the BNS, which criminalise offences such as causing the disappearance of evidence, harbouring an offender, and wrongful confinement. This was read together with Sections 3(1)(r), 3(1)(s), and 3(2)(v) of the Prevention of Atrocities Act.
India still does not have a dedicated central legislation that is specifically targeting honour killings, at least not yet. The Law Commission of India, in its 242nd Report of 2012, had recommended the enactment of something along those lines, and the Supreme Court in Shakti Vahini v. Union of India (2018) directed States to create special cells and to follow preventive measures. Still, a standalone statute never materialized. Tamil Nadu also does not appear to have a specific honour-killing prevention law, even though the State has prosecuted such cases using existing legal frameworks. In the present matter, the court observed that Tamil Nadu had recorded 59 honour killings over the preceding ten years—a number which Justice Pugalendhi described as a kind of proof that casteism has deeply lodged itself into public consciousness.
Saravanan’s bail application, filed as the second accused, argued that his role was either marginal or misunderstood. His counsel claimed he had gone to the scene, informed the police of his son’s involvement, and even surrendered himself the same day. They also maintained that no phone calls had been proven between him and his son before the killing. The prosecution and the victim’s family opposed bail, arguing that Saravanan, as a police officer, posed a risk of intimidating the witness. They noted that three earlier bail applications had already been rejected, including one by the High Court in December 2025. By the time the current appeal was heard, Saravanan had spent ten months in custody, and a final charge sheet had been filed.
After reviewing the materials, the court concluded that the charge sheet did not establish a clear evidentiary link between Saravanan and the primary offense. It noted the absence of pre-occurrence calls between him and the deceased or his son and observed that continued custody at this stage would effectively amount to pre-trial imprisonment. Bail was granted with strict conditions: Saravanan was ordered to reside in Coimbatore, report twice daily to the nearest police station, execute a bond of Rs. 1,00,000 with two sureties, and submit an undertaking not to visit the crime scene or intimidate witnesses during the trial.
What sets this judgment apart, however, is not its operative part but its obiter dicta—the court’s observations, which, while not legally binding, carry significant moral and institutional weight. Justice Pugalendhi suggested that even if the appellant did not play a direct part in the killing, he bore some responsibility for raising a son who was imbued with casteist thinking. The court acknowledged that this mindset is not confined to one family or community, admitting frankly that even judges are not immune to its influence. Judicial orders are often read through a caste lens by onlookers. Such judicial self-awareness, laid out in a written judgment, is relatively rare in Indian legal discourse and deserves attention. The court also noted the limited efficacy of existing legal frameworks; the kind that look solid in theory but not so much on the ground. The court also emphasized the rising number of cases registered under the Atrocities Act, even though the law has been on the books since 1989. While a government-appointed committee—headed by retired Justice K. Chandru—previously sought to address caste discrimination in schools, the court acknowledged that Justice Chandru’s recommendations never came to fruition. This pattern, where legal frameworks never move from paper to practice, is one the court seemed familiar with, despite carrying on within those same frameworks.
From the perspective of a law student observing this case, what stands out most is the tension the court quietly identifies between two layers of the same system. On one level, the law provides remedies such as the Atrocities Act, bail jurisprudence under the BNS, and the Supreme Court’s directions on honour killings. On the other level, the social conditions that produce these killings—caste endogamy enforced by violence and communities that treat inter-caste relationships as a threat to shared identity—remain stubbornly intact. The law can punish single acts, but is far less ready to undo the social grammar that makes those acts feel, to some, like an obligation. The court’s turn toward moral exhortation—invoking soldiers who die without caste marks on their blood (a reference to the idea that caste distinctions dissolve in shared sacrifice) or nature, which bestows rain and sun on all without favor—reveals this frustration. These are powerful images that highlight a gap between laws and societal problems that run deep and structural.
There is also a procedural question worth noting in all of this. As a serving police officer, Saravanan’s position raises real concerns about witness influence, evidence tampering, and institutional cover-ups—risks that are structurally higher when the accused can leverage state machinery. The victim’s family was not wrong to raise those points. The conditions imposed by the court are not small, but their effectiveness will depend on the quality of monitoring. It remains to be seen whether the twice-daily reporting requirement and residential restrictions will truly insulate the trial from interference. Civil society and the court itself will need to watch closely.
The Kavin honour killing case and its judicial aftermath crystallise a problem that India has not resolved for decades: caste-based violence that cuts across class lines, implicates people in positions of institutional authority, and continues to occur at a pace that legislation alone has clearly not been able to arrest. The court’s decision to grant bail may be defensible on the facts as they stand before the trial; its larger remarks about the state’s responsibility, the failure of school-level reform, and the need for political will to match legislative intent are directed at an audience much wider than the parties in the case.
Whether national and local governments in Tamil Nadu are listening, and whether—as Justice Pugalendhi put it—the mindset of the people can genuinely be changed, are questions that will be answered not in courtrooms, but in classrooms, council halls, and communities. The trial in Second Additional Sessions Court (SC) No. 120 of 2025 in Tirunelveli is expected to proceed, and the extent to which the bail conditions hold will be closely watched by rights advocates and legal observers in the coming months.
Opinions expressed in JURIST Dispatches are solely those of our correspondents in the field and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST’s editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.
