PRAYAGRAJ, Feb. 13 -- The Allahabad high court has observed that caste determined by birth remains unchanged despite religious conversion or inter-caste marriage. The high court was hearing a criminal case involving atrocities under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, to a woman who belonged to the Scheduled Caste but married a non-Scheduled Caste man. Justice Anil Kumar made the observation in an order dated February 10 and dismissed a criminal appeal filed by Dinesh and eight others, challenging an order passed by the Special Judge, SC/ST Act, Aligarh, summoning them to face trial for offences under Sections 323, 506, 452 and 354 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 3(1)(R) of the SC/ST Act. The Special Judge, SC/ST Act, Aligarh, had passed the order dated July 27, 2022. The woman filed a criminal complaint against the appellants, alleging that she was assaulted and abused and that the appellants used casteist slurs against her during the altercation. She also alleged that three people, including herself, were injured in the incident. Challenging the summoning order, the appellants moved the high court, wherein they argued that though the informant originally belonged to the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) community by birth and is originally a resident of West Bengal, she lost her caste status after she married a man belonging to the Jat community. It was contended that a woman, after marrying a person of another caste, loses her original caste which she held since birth and thereafter belongs to the caste of her husband. Therefore, they argued that summoning the appellants for offences under the SC/ST Act is unsustainable. It was also argued that the informant had falsely implicated them after the appellants lodged a prior FIR against the informant and her family. The state counsel, however, opposed their plea on the ground that the incident stated in the complaint and the incident narrated in the FIR are simultaneous; both incidents occurred on the same date. Hence, it was submitted that the claim of the appellants that the present complaint was lodged as a counterblast is untenable. Against this backdrop, the bench noted that the trial court had summoned the appellants after considering the statements of the informant and her witnesses, along with the injury reports. It also noted that the existence of a cross-case does not constitute a ground to discard a complaint filed by the opposite party on a rival version. So far as the contention that the informant has lost her caste after marrying a person belonging to the Jat community is concerned, the court rejected the same as it noted thus: "Though a person may change religion, his or her caste remains the same despite conversion to another religion. Hence, marriage does not change a person's caste. Therefore, the said contention is unsustainable." Consequently, the appeal was dismissed....