A Dalit woman and a Muslim man had an affair. The man’s mother opposed their marriage, hurling caste-based abuses at the Dalit woman. Bombay High Court recently ruled that no offence is caused under Sections 3 (1)(r) and 3(1)(s) of the Scheduled Caste and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act known in short as the SC/ST Act or the PoA, because the insults were not made in public view. The law often deploys the public-private divide to exempt the state from its responsibility to redress individual injuries emanating from social inequalities. For example, until the passage of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act of 2005, the state could easily ignore domestic violence against women as a private and personal matter in India.