The history of the disability rights movement in India is a history of modest victories alongside some crucial setbacks. However, in recent years, mainstream historiography has valorised these victories to such an extent that it appears as though India is firmly on a progressive path of disability discourse that cannot be reversed. This belief resembles a fairy tale. As if at a time when several minority groups have faced violent ‘othering’, bulldozer justice and the force of authoritarian politics, middle-class, apolitical disabled persons have been able to secure certain rights through the instruments of liberal legalism.Within this linear narrative of progress, a brutal disruption came with the Puja Khedkar episode. This episode fostered widespread suspicion regarding the disabilities of government employees. Bodies were scrutinised to suggest that disabilities were either not genuine or not ‘disabled enough’. Several civil servants, including NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant and IAS officer Smita Sabharwal, publicly expressed the view that disabled persons are not fit to serve in certain services, including the civil services. A minority group once described as ‘insular and discrete’ thus came under intense suspicion from both social media trolls and the state.The incredulity of the state towards disabled bodies has created a serious predicament for the disabled community. The recent directive issued by the government of Maharashtra exemplifies this suspicious gaze, rendering disabled bodies perpetual objects of state doubt. The directive requires disabled employees in Maharashtra who have received appointments, promotions, government schemes or concessions under disability reservation policies to produce their disability certificates and Unique Disability Identity Documents (UDIDs) for verification.Also read: ‘Apolitical’ Disability Movement Suffers from a Democratic DeficitIt further states that action will be taken against individuals who have submitted bogus certificates or UDIDs. Even after this verification, if administrative authorities harbour doubts about the genuineness of a certificate, they may initiate further re-verification of the disability certificate or UDID.A suspecting but unaccountable state, docile disabled bodies and the question of legalityAt first glance, and without legal context, this exercise undertaken by the government of Maharashtra may appear to be a routine administrative measure. However, this is not the case. It shifts the entire burden of proving disability onto the disabled employee. The state and medical officers who may have issued bogus certificates face no consequences.By contrast, disabled employees become perennial suspects who can be questioned at any time on the presumption that their disabilities are not genuine. Moreover, employees with invisible disabilities, as recent instances of social media trolling of disabled officers demonstrate, face heightened risks of marginalisation, ‘othering’ and humiliation.Such re-verification exercises are not isolated aberrations but part of a recurring pattern, despite the statutorily guaranteed universal mandate of the UDID under Section 59 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. The law on this issue is unambiguous. Disability certificates are issued through a clearly prescribed statutory process and, once issued, are valid and binding. Any challenge to the decision of the certifying authority must follow the procedure laid down in law, rather than ad hoc or extra-legal means. Yet, the mere existence of law does not, by itself, guarantee the meaningful enjoyment of rights.A closer examination reveals that the supposed universality of disability certification, now embodied in the UDID, is repeatedly undermined in practice. Persons with disabilities are required to obtain separate documentation to access railway concessions. Students seeking admission to professional colleges are subjected to fresh medical assessments, with their UDIDs disregarded in favour of re-verification. The present round of mass re-verification driven by administrative fiat is part of a longer trajectory.Also read: To Ten of Eleven RTIs on Disabled Rights, EC Invoked ‘Disproportionate Diversion of Resources’The Maharashtra directive places the entire disabled community under suspicion, requiring every disabled employee to prove the authenticity of both their disability and their documentation. The directive also appears to exceed the jurisdiction of the state government insofar as it purports to verify the genuineness of UDIDs. Questioning the validity of UDIDs issued through a centralised statutory mechanism undermines the spirit of cooperative federalism.A state with a medical gazeOver the course of their lives, disabled individuals are repeatedly compelled to subject their bodies to medical scrutiny and state surveillance in order to access affirmative action measures and concessions. The Maharashtra government’s directive to re-investigate disability certificates and UDIDs exacerbates a long-standing structural problem: the proliferation of certification authorities, procedures, and medical boards governing disability recognition. This fragmented regime forces individuals to undergo repeated medical examinations, often for the same purpose.Alarmingly, different medical boards frequently reach divergent conclusions regarding the nature and percentage of disability, exposing the process as subjective, inconsistent and discriminatory.Such arbitrariness erodes the foundations of affirmative action by rendering access to constitutionally guaranteed benefits uncertain and precarious. More fundamentally, the insistence on repeated verification renders disabled bodies perpetually suspect, compelled to submit continuously to scrutiny, discipline and certification in order to be deemed deserving.This process produces docile bodies conditioned to comply with invasive assessments rather than rights-bearing citizens entitled to dignity. Requiring individuals to repeatedly ‘prove’ their disability through medical inspection is humiliating and violates the constitutional guarantee of dignity under Article 21.As Mitchell and Snyder argue, disability must be located “as a primary case for social justice rather than an exception to the rules of human governance”. The Maharashtra government’s re-verification directive directly contradicts the human rights model of disability articulated by Theresia Degener. Disability is not a defect inherent in individual bodies, but a status shaped by social, legal and institutional barriers. The role of the state is to dismantle these barriers, not reproduce them through suspicion and surveillance. Mandatory re-verification recentres disability within a biomedical and disciplinary framework, treating persons with disabilities as potential fraudsters rather than as rights-holders whose dignity is non-negotiable.Also read: Training, Employment of Persons With Disabilities Drops Under Central Schemes in 2nd Modi RegimeMartha Fineman’s work on vulnerability further illuminates the violence of this approach. Vulnerability, Fineman reminds us, is universal and embodied, and it is the responsibility of the state to respond through care and support rather than distrust. By casting disabled bodies as perpetually suspect, the state denies their lived, embodied existence and replaces it with abstract metrics, percentages, and administrative thresholds. Vulnerability is not accommodated but weaponised.These directives undermine the social model of disability, which shifts focus from individual impairment to structural barriers. Instead, disability is reduced to an object of biomedical suspicion, where capacity and functionality are narrowly and arbitrarily defined, thereby eroding inclusion and justice. Notably, while disabled bodies are repeatedly subjected to scrutiny, the state and authorities responsible for issuing bogus certificates remain unaccountable.Disability in a verification-punishment cultureThe Maharashtra government’s attempt to re-verify disability certificates must be situated within the broader political context marked by the steady rise of executive authoritarianism in India. Across multiple domains, the state has normalised a logic of suspicion. This manifests through practices such as bulldozer justice, where executive power displaces due process, and administrative exercises like the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which treat citizenship and entitlement as privileges that must be continually proven rather than as rights guaranteed by law.Also read: My Experience With Travelling in Indian Railway’s ‘Divyang’ CoachWithin this environment, everyone becomes a potential suspect, and persons with disabilities are among the most vulnerable to this expanding culture of verification and punishment.Repeated inquiries into disability status align closely with this authoritarian impulse, as the executive positions itself as the ultimate arbiter of legitimacy while bypassing legal safeguards, institutional expertise, and constitutional limits. For disabled persons, this translates into endless scrutiny of their bodies, lives, and claims, reinforcing fear and dependency rather than autonomy and dignity. The disability justice movement cannot afford to dismiss such directives as isolated administrative actions.The Maharashtra government’s move should serve as a critical warning for India’s disability justice movement to assert itself politically and to recognise the dangers posed by rising authoritarianism and the attendant logic of collective punishment.Vijay K. Tiwari is an Assistant Professor of Law at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata and founder-director of Justice Radha Binod Pal Centre of Critical Legal Studies. Sanjay Jain is a Professor of Law at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. Shrutika Pandey is an advocate and researcher. She leads the Access to Justice Network at Nyaaya, housed within the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.