Dalit Thrashed in Uttarakhand for Eating Alongside Upper Caste Men, Dies

New Delhi: A 23-year-old Dalit man died in a hospital in Uttarakhand’s Tehri district on Sunday, May 5, after he was allegedly beaten up by some ‘upper caste’ people for eating alongside them at a wedding reception, as per reports in The Hindu.

The victim, identified as Jeetendra Das, was thrashed by some upper caste men who seemed to have lost their temper as they saw him eating in front of them “despite being from lower caste”, DSP Uttam Singh Jamwal told The Hindu.

The family of the victim alleged that he was beaten up by upper caste men in Nainbagh tehsil on April 26 from where an injured Das was initially taken to a local community healthcare centre and was subsequently referred to Shri Mahant Indiresh Hospital in Dehradun on April 28, where he succumbed to his injuries.

As per reports in Times Of India, Pooja Das, the victim’s sister, said that the wedding where the incident took place was a dalit wedding. She said that her brother made the mistake of taking food from the same counter as the upper caste men and sitting next to them while eating.

She further said that the victim was the sole bread-earning member of the family and her family was being threatened to withdraw the case.

A large contingent of the police was deployed outside the hospital where Das died after around 50 villagers threatened to march to the chief minister’s house to seek justice for the deceased.

One of the panchayat members from Nainbagh, Sandeep Khanna, who was accompanying the family of the victim to Dehradun told TOI that the police took a lot of time to lodge an FIR in the case and not a single arrest had been made till now even after the accused have been booked under the SC/ST Act.

He further said that a huge number of police personnel were deployed to stop them but the police failed to arrest even a single accused in Tehri.

This is not the first time an incident like this has taken place in Uttarakhand. Around six months ago, an upper caste man had beaten a dalit for not giving him liquor. The police did not file an FIR in the case even after repeated attempts and the victim is still missing.

Read More: https://www.newsclick.in/rising-atrocities-dalits-bjp-ruled-himachal-pradesh

In fact, various reports suggest that cases of atrocities against dalits and other minorities have risen since the Narendra Modi-led BJP Government came to power in 2014.

Recently, a teenage boy was abducted, tied to a tree and whipped by upper caste people in Gujarat for allegedly being in a relationship with an upper caste girl. Various such cases have been reported from different states like Gujarat, Karnataka, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh among others.

According to Right To Information (RTI) application by Gujarat-based dalit rights activist Kaushik Parmar, in 2018, as many as 1,545 cases of atrocities against dalits were registered, which is the highest number in 17 years.

Read More: https://www.newsclick.in/gujarat-dalit-teen-tied-and-thrashed-misses-board-exam