Dalits Media Watch
News Updates 14.05.14
Three youths gang-rape minor girl during wedding ceremony- TFPJ
Rape victim’s uncle attempts suicide - The Tribune
DEMONSTRATION STAGED OVER RISING ATTACKS ON DALITS- The Pioneer
Send us to Pakistan, but don’t ask us to go back to our villages, say Dalit victims of caste violence in Haryana- Two Circles
In Maharashtra, police are underplaying the horrific lynching of a Dalit teenager- Scroll In
Over 50 Dalits allege police harassment in church fest- The Hindu
Note: Please find attachment for HINDI DMW (PDF)
TFPJ
Three youths gang-rape minor girl during wedding ceremony
SHIVPURI: Three youths dragged a 13-year-old girl to a house and gang-raped her in a village under Khaniandhana police station area on Monday night. The girl was watching a marriage procession when the accused took her to a nearby house where they raped her. The accused fled from the house when some villagers reached there after hearing the girl’s screams.
The girl’s father had gone to another village to participate in a wedding while her physically disabled girl was at home. He filed a complaint at Khaniandhana police station. The three accused have been booked under section 376 B of the IPC, sections 3, 2 (5) of the SC/ST Act and section 4 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offence Act, 2012.
According to sources, the incident took place at Devkho village during the marriage of Virendra Pal’s daughter. The girl was at Pal’s house and watching the wedding procession when accused Pran Singh, son of Gulva Kushwaha, Manoj, son of Kamla Koli, Shankar, son of Mangalia Koli forcibly took her Shankar’s house.
Pran Singh raped the girl first after which Manoj took the turn. The other villagers including Bhadda Jatav, Jagdish Chouhan, Arjan and Sukhlal were passing by Shankar’s house where they heard the girl’s screams for help. The accused escaped from the house when the villagers entered the house after breaking open the door.
The villagers took the girl to her house where her physically challenged mother was alone during her husband’s absence. The cops have launched a hunt to nab the accused after the victim’s father filed a case.
The Tribune
Hisar, May 13
An uncle of one of the four minor girls of Bhagana village, who were raped in March, attempted suicide by consuming poison at his residence last night. While the police have booked him under Section 309 of the IPC, he alleged that he took the step as he was being pressurised to withdraw the case by some of the villagers.
Talking to The Tribune from the PGIMS, Rohtak, over phone, he alleged that some villagers belonging to the upper caste Jats had been pressuring him to withdraw the rape and abduction case against the village youths.
When asked whether anyone visited him at his residence to threaten him in this regard, he denied, while reiterating that he tried to end his life because he was unable to cope up with the growing pressure for compromise.
Meanwhile, the police spokesperson, Harish Bhardwaj, maintained that he had been booked for attempt to suicide by the Hisar sadar police station. The initial probe, however, denied any pressure from the rape accused, stating that the accused youths had been arrested.
The investigating officer in the case said he had been admitted to the hospital and was referred to the PGIMS, Rohtak, where his condition is said to be stable. In March, four girls belonging to the Dalit community were reportedly lured and raped by a group of upper caste youths.
The girls were recovered and taken back from the Bathinda railway station while the accused youths were later arrested by the Hisar police.
The Pioneer
DEMONSTRATION STAGED OVER RISING ATTACKS ON DALITS
Worried over the increasing attacks and torture on Dalit people across the State and protesting the lackadaisical attitude of the State Government in ensuring justice to them, a large number of Dalits under the banner of the National Dalit Mahasangh on Monday staged a demonstration here at Mahatma Gandhi Marg.
“Attacks on Dalit people have become a practice in the State. The State Government, instead of providing safety and security to them, is sitting idle if a Dalit torture case comes to its notice,” alleged Mahasangh president Ashok Mallick.
The Mahasangh submitted a six-point charter of demands to the Chief Secretary.
The demands included immediate arrest of culprits involved in the attack on Dalit woman Mamata Mallick in the Airfield police station area, action against a police ASI for attacking tribal youth Saroj Dehury in the Chandaka police station area and arrest of culprits involved in assaulting a 14-year-old Dalit girl in Tirtol in Jagatsinghpur district.
Two Circles
Send us to Pakistan, but don’t ask us to go back to our villages, say Dalit victims of caste violence in Haryana
By M Reyaz, TwoCircles.net,
Hissar/New Delhi: On Sunday, May 11, a large number of Dalit women from a village in Haryana staged a protest outside the residence of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, demanding the arrest of a village head and his son over the alleged gang rape of four minor girls. Earlier on May 5, about hundreds of them had organised a candle-march at Jantar Mantar seeking justice for the four girls who were gang-raped by a group of boys from the dominant Jat community. Police had put barricade as safety-measure and did not allow them to move beyond a certain limit.
About 100 Dalit families from Bhagana village in Haryana’s Hissar district are sitting on dharna since April 16 at Jantar Mantar and even met the Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, on April 27. Shinde, who is himself a Dalit, had assured to look into the matter. But so far nothing has come out of this.
On March 23, away from the media glare, as the election campaigns were in full swing four girls, belonging to the Balmiki community in Bhagana village were allegedly kidnapped by a group of Jat boys and gang-raped.
They were dumped at Bhatinda railway Station, about 170 Km away, where they were found in “almost unconscious state” by the village head and their relatives a day later.
To file even the FIR, they had to sit on dharna and call local champion of Dalit causes, Ved Pal Tanwar. Under pressure police filed the FIR but victims’ families were not satisfied and they sat on dharna outside the District-Headquarter (Mini-Secretariat). Seeing no actions and progress in the case, they eventually moved to the National Capital on April 16.
While both sides gave varying versions of the incidence, medical tests of the four girls, one of whom is minor, have confirmed rapes. The police has subsequently arrested the five accused named by the victims: Lalit Panghal, Sumit Panghal, Dharnwir Panghal, Sandip Panghal, all residents of Bhagana village, and Parmal Panghal, resident of Kugand, Bawani Kheda village.
Victims’ families claim that it was a premeditated crime and that the village headman Rakesh Panghal too was aware, since it was he who discovered that the girls were in Bhatinda through his nephew Lalit. They also claim that more people were involved, but police is trying to protect them.
Rakesh Panghal, Sarpanch (Village Headman) of Bhagana, himself a Jat, too agrees that “politics over caste” has aggravated but defends his relatives and others in the case, alleging that one of the girls was in “relationship” with one of the boys accused of rape, suggesting that there might have been “consensual-relations,” and the family is now “falsely trying to implicate” them for political gains.
The Sarpanch’ version has too many loopholes for one to trust it blindly, and one would know the truth only as the trail begins, but one cannot ignore the fact that Bhagana has seen several reported instances of caste violence, besides many more unreported squabble of everyday.
This case cannot be seen in isolation as the village has seen several clashes in last couple of years between dominant Jats and backward Dalits of Balmiki and Kumhar community. The “benefits” of Constitutional guarantees and reservations have impacted in “empowering” the backward community as several of their wards could study and even join forces or find jobs outside. As they started asserting themselves and demanded equal rights, they had to face the backlash from the land-holding community in the village. Many of these Dalits worked as virtual “bonded labours.”
Rohit Bokda, a young Dalit boy from the village who too is on dharna in Delhi and accompanied us to the village narrated how when he was 15 years old there was a fight between Dalit boys and those from the Jat community. He says, “Although the fault was theirs, Dalits were forced to apologise in the Panchayat.” Since then he did not like living in the village a lot, he says, and moved to his uncle’s place in Rohtak. “We live in a free country, why should we still remain slaves?” he says, sitting next to me in the cab on our way to Hissar.
In March 2012, when the ground where Dalit boys played was “acquired” by Jats and a wall was constructed obstructing Dalits from the village to have access to the Chowk, (community space), Dalits in the village protested and filed cases. Over 130 families sat on dharna outside the District Headquarter (Mini Secretariat) in Hissar. It’s been almost two years and many of them are still sitting on Dharna. When TCN visited the site, there were around 10-12 men, most of them old, were sitting on the site.
Virender Bagoriya, one of the leaders of the agitation, told TCN, “Some of the villagers were bribed by the district administration and they left the agitation. But most families are still with us and in protest they have not returned to the village, but some of them are engaged in different kinds of manual labour and are living in different parts of the town.” Several false cases were slapped to pressurise him to stop his agitation.
When we visited the Bhagana village, we found doors of many Dalit houses locked. Around 40 odd families who are still there in the village appeared hopeless and desperate. Mahendra Singh, a 65 year old villager from Balimiki community, says, “Who wants to stay here anyways? Given an opportunity we too would move.”
From school to health centre to play-ground, “everything is on their (dominant Jat community) side of the village,” they point out.
There have been some major events of caste violence in the Haryana such as the violence in Gohana in 2005, Mirchpur in 2010, etc. Further reports of rapes, murder and attacks on people from the backward community for using parks, temples, etc are rampant. According to the 2012 data of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Haryana reported 19 cases of murders of Dalits, 67 cases of rapes and 27 cases of kidnappings and abductions. Victims’ families allege that the local administration that comprise of large number of Jats, are soft on such cases of atrocities against Dalits.
All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch (AIDMAM) or the "Dalit Women's Self-Determination Front,” had recently organized a Pad Yatra (foot-march) that covered four states in north India and lasted more than a month, fromFebruary 17 to March 12 that aimed to put "political pressure on officials, call out perpetrators and raise the continued cry for justice," the march was an expression of "issues regarding caste and women."
82 year old Subbeh Singh is originally from Mirchpur, whose brother was killed in the 2010 violence. He now lives in a camp in Hissar with the families of his five sons. About 120 families live in this camp. 38 year old Dilbag Singh, one of his sons, narrates how they all flee out of fear and sat on dharna outside Mini-Secretariat of Hissar for over two months.
Ved Pal Tanwar, who is himself a Rajput but has championed the causes of the backward communities provided them food and other support. When he found that the villagers were not ready to return back and that little help was coming from the state government or local administration, he helped set-up tents and virtual relief camp has come up at his private property in Hissar.
Tanwar, who contested election on the BSP ticket from Bhimani in the ongoing Lok Sabha election was himself slapped with several cases on many occasions, “once even for sedition,” he laughs as he informs us.
When TCN visited the camp last Saturday (May 3) in the afternoon, temperature was soaring over 40 degree Celsius and the tents of plastics appeared like hot-oven. Many families were cramped into these tents, and several men were trying to keep themselves cool under the shades of nearby trees. The horror of the atrocities committed is still too strong in their minds to even think of going back to their native villages.
Asked if he would want to return back to his village, Dilbag Singh said, “Send us to Pakistan, but don’t ask us to go back to our villages,” adding, “We are ready to face any hardships and willing to shift and work anywhere.”
Haryana is not the only state where caste-based violence comes to light from time to time. In fact, according to the NCRB data, it contributes only 0.75% of the total cases reported all over the country against the Scheduled Castes (SC). According to this data, Uttar Pradesh tops the list with 18.43% of total crimes committed against SCs, despite the fact that that the state has seen Mayawati, a Dalit leader as CM four times in the past.
Rajasthan with 16.52% and Bihar with 14.32% are not very far behind.
Last year, the Patna High Court acquitted all 26 accused in the infamous Laxmanpur-Bathe massacre case of 1997 in Bihar. In April 2012, the Patna HC had similarly acquitted 23 persons allegedly belonging to the upper-caste militia Ranvir-Sena who were accused of murdering 21 Dalit including women and children in another case of caste-violence of 1996 Bathani Tola massacre.
The low rate of convictions and prolonged trails have surely failed to prove a deterrent as only last week, there was a reported case of Dalit boy in Ahmadnagar in Maharashtra hung to tree as he was seen with an upper caste girl. The National Capital Region’s Noida (UP), last week saw clashes between Gujjars and Dalits that left one person dead and several others injured. After the incident, afraid many of the Dalit families either flee from their homes or locked themselves up for fear of large-scale backlash.
Meanwhile, the protesters at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, many of them women, including the victims of rapes, are sitting side by side with the male members of the families, their faces often covered with Ghunghat or Dupatta, seeking justice. Photos of Dalit icons like Jyotiba Phule and Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar dotting at the posters and banners that declare their resolve to go back only if they get justice or are ready to even die.
Scroll In
In Maharashtra, police are underplaying the horrific lynching of a Dalit teenager
The police attempted to cover up the casteist nature of the murder of a 17-year-old Dalit boy in Maharashtra last fortnight, says an independent fact-finding report.
On April 28, the body of a 17-year-old Dalit boy was found hanging from a tree, in Kharda village in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district. He had a broken spine and burn marks all over his body. The boy, Nitin Aage, had been allegedly killed by a group of Maratha men for daring to speak to an upper-caste girl.
The police have arrested 13 suspects so far, but had it not been for the intervention of Dalit activists, Aage’s death may not even have been recognised as a murder. According to a fact-finding report drawn up by a group of activists this week, the police first intended to record the incident merely as an accidental death.
The report, written by a team of seven activists from the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights and the Republican Panthers Annihilation of Caste group, said that though the media emphasised the fact that Aage was a Dalit youth killed by upper caste men, the report claims that the police and other lobbies in Ahmednagar are attempting to label it as a case of honour killing unrelated to caste.
“In many cases of atrocities against Dalits, the caste angle is suppressed, even if the guilty are punished,” said Arun Ferreira, one of the seven members of the fact-finding team put together by the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights and the Republican Panthers Annihilation of Caste campaign. They plan to submit their report to the police and local government officials by the end of the week.
The police frequently underplay the casteist nature of such crimes, Ferreira said, in order to create the impression that caste-based oppression is no longer a major problem in India. Despite this, the number of crimes reported against Dalits remains significantly high across the country. Here are the figures for Maharashtra alone, both in terms of general crimes as well as crimes registered under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district, where Nitin Aage was murdered, has seen at least 73 incidents of caste-based atrocities last year, according to the fact-finding report.
Aage was in class at the Rayat Shikshak Sansthan, a well-known school and junior college near Kharde village, when he was allegedly taken out by three Maratha men, beaten in the school premises, dragged across to the nearby highway road and eventually taken to an abandoned area where they smeared him with burning embers and hung him from a tree, to make it look like a suicide.
By this time, eye-witnesses had already informed Aage’s parents that their son had been beaten by Sachin Golekar, the brother of the upper-caste girl Aage had spoken to, and his friend Sheshrao Yeole. Later, Aage’s parents stated in their complaint that they had warned their son to stay away from the upper-caste girl to avoid any trouble.
Several witnesses in and around Aage's school described to the fact-finding team how the beating had taken place. “But many of the young witnesses claim that the police has not recorded their statements,” said Shabana Khan, an advocate from Mumbai who was part of the team.
Even though the police have booked Sachin Golekar, Sheshrao Yeole and other suspects for murder as well as under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, the report suggests that there have been deliberate lapses in the investigation.
“For one, the police claim they were unable to take the statement of the girl Nitin spoke to soon after the crime, because that would hurt her family’s sentiments,” said Khan. However, a few days later, news emerged that the girl had attempted suicide by setting herself on fire and is now battling for life in a Solapur hospital.
“We want investigating teams to recognise the girl is also a victim and that her statement would be important for the case,” said Ferreira.
While the fact-finding team believes that it is impossible that the school authorities were unaware of the fact that a student was being beaten up on campus, the police have not recorded the statement of the school principal. The deputy superintendent of police cited “the principal’s due retirement and his inability to take pressure” as the reasons for not recording his statement, says the report.
“That school is well-known in the area because its committee members include NCP [Nationalist Congress Party] leaders like Sharad Pawar, Ajit Pawar and Supriya Sule,” said Shyam Sonar, a member of the Republican Panthers organisation. “The Golekars themselves are part of the administration of the institute, so it is not surprising that they are being protected.”
The Golekar family, according to the report, is closely associated with the NCP and enjoys a lot of “economic and socio-political clout” in Kharda village. While Nitin Aage’s father is a landless labourer in a stone-crushing mill, the Golekars own more than 500 acres of land and a number of businesses.
The fact-finding team has recommended that the school management, principal and teachers should be made co-accused in the crime, that the safety of the Aage family and the girl from the Golekar family should be ensured and that the Ahmednagar district superintendent of police should be suspended. “A proper investigation should be done to bring out the casteist intent of the offence so as to ensure proper applicability of the charged provisions of the Prevention of Atrocities Act,” the report says.
The Hindu
Over 50 Dalits allege police harassment in church fest
Hindu youth allegedly asked Dalits to keep away from car fest
Over 50 Dalit women and men of Pokkattakudi Seshasamudram near Lalgudi in the district thronged the Collector’s Office in the city on Tuesday alleging police harassment following a dispute over their participation in the annual car festival of a church in the neighbouring Periyavarseeli village last weekend.
The trouble began on Saturday after a few caste Hindus youths of Periyavarseeli village reportedly told the Dalits that they should not participate in the car festival of the Adaikalamatha Church held last week. The Dalits had returned after the incident, but some of them had questioned a youth who visited their village on Sunday.
A police constable on patrol, the villagers alleged, had intervened and assaulted the Dalits without any enquiry.
“We were just talking to the youth in a friendly manner asking him about the reason for being told to stay away from the festival. But the constable started attacking us. Some of us objected to his action and there was a scuffle. The constable called up his colleagues and 10 to 15 policemen descended on the scene and attacked us indiscriminately,” said N.Mohan, one of the villagers.
However, police claimed there was a scuffle between the two groups necessitating the intervention of a police constable on patrol. The villagers had taken objection to this and attacked him, a senior police officer said.
Cases have been registered against 11 persons in connection with the incident and two have been arrested
News Monitor by Girish Pant
.Arun Khote
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of “Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC”)
Pl visit on FACEBOOK : https://www.facebook.com/
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of “Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC”)
Pl visit on FACEBOOK : https://www.facebook.com/
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