When the Odisha judiciary set “odious” bail conditions, like cleaning police stations for two months, for members of Adivasi and Dalit communities, it suggested that judges had a “regressive mindset” and caste-based biases, the Supreme Court said on Monday (May 4, 2026).

“Assuming that such conditions were imposed inadvertently or without any premeditated bias, the nature of the condition is so abhorrent, degrading, and unknown to law that it carries the potential to cast a serious aspersion, suggesting that the Odisha Judiciary is afflicted by a caste-based bias,” a Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi observed in a seven-page order.