Recently, in Lt. Col. Nitisha v. Union of India, (‘Nitisha’) the Supreme Court was concerned with the validity of the requirements that had been put in place by the army to decide upon the grant of a Permanent Commission to women Short Service Commission officers. While examining these requirements, the Court, for the first time, acknowledged ‘indirect discrimination’ and ‘structural discrimination’ as tools of Indian equality law. To this extent, the decision is indeed laudatory. However, when outlining the contours of indirect discrimination, the Court has identified ‘intention’ as an indicium that demarcates indirect from direct discrimination. In this note, I contend that the use of ‘intention’ as a differentiating point may have a curtailing effect on direct discrimination actions in the future. I argue that ‘intention’ ought not to be understood as a necessary component of direct discrimination in India for three reasons – first, it is not necessarily linked to the harms involved in discrimination; second, it adds to the evidentiary burden that a plaintiff needs to discharge, and third, it has been understood in an unduly narrow manner, at least in other jurisdictions. Therefore, I propose two alternate ways to understand and apply Nitisha in subsequent direct discrimination actions. The first is to hold that ‘intention’ is only a sufficient but not a necessary component of direct discrimination. The second is to construe ‘intention’ itself capaciously.