A car full of booze and an unlikely HC ruling on caste. What's the connection?

In April 2023, in Etawah in Uttar Pradesh, the local police stopped a black Scorpio. Inside they found three men, and in the boot — boxes and boxes of whisky bottles marked “For Sale in Haryana Only". Soon another car was caught, again full of liquor. The police noted everything down, even the castes of the men — Mali, Pahadi Rajput, Thakur, Punjabi Parashar, Brahmin.

Among the men was Praveen Chhetri, the Pahadi Rajput. He said he was innocent, just returning from a family gathering, hitching a ride because no buses were available. He pleaded before the High Court: “Quash this case, I’m falsely implicated.”

Now, the judge, Justice Vinod Diwakar, looked at this plea. And as he read the police papers, something troubled him — not just the liquor, not just the fake number plates — but