24.OCT.2023.UNTOUCHABLES OF INDIA.TODAY.by.IDBNS.Chennai.26.
- Ujjain rape survivor’s ordeal continues as caste bias looms over political arena
Ujjain rape survivor’s ordeal continues as caste bias looms over political arena
In Sept, a 13-year-old girl, bleeding and semi-nude, was seen begging for help in the streets of Ujjain after being brutally raped by an autorickshaw driver
Barely a month ago, the 13-year-old girl, bleeding and semi-nude, was seen begging for help in the streets of Ujjain after being brutally raped by an autorickshaw driver. She had run away from her home after a tiff with her grandfather and reached Ujjain. After medical treatment at an Ujjain hospital, she returned home on October 12.
Ujjain’s apathy to the victim was evident in videos that emerged of her seeking help, but back home, there is not much sympathy for her, especially among upper castes, who continue to discriminate against Dalits like her. Her family, and other Dalits have to use a separate handpump and there is no electricity supply to her Dalit basti. “That is how we have been living here for decades,” said her grandfather. The family belongs to the scheduled caste Dohar community considered untouchable in Satna.
Rape survivor’s grandfather regrets his own role in the sordid affair; had he not scolded her on September 24 morning she would not have left, he says. When he went to lodge a complaint with Jatwara police station, about two km from the village, that evening, the police personnel asked him to search for her himself. An FIR was lodged almost a day after he complained.
“Had the police acted on my complaint, the girl could have been found in a train and saved from being raped,” he said. Jatwara police station in-charge Shweta Maurya defends the police’s response. “The grandfather had come to the police station in the night and a policeman was sent to her house but nobody was found at home. Later, we took prompt action in the matter.”
On September 24, the girl, who is speaking impaired, was going to school, 3 km from her house, to appear in an Olympiad. Her grandfather told her to stay at home. At about 10 a.m. when her grandfather took his goats for grazing, she left the house. She reached Jatwara railway station from where she boarded the train for Satna and then Ujjain.
Her grandfather said that as she came out of the Ujjain railway station, an auto driver offered her help. “He took her to an insolated place and raped her. He pushed her into the autorichshaw once again and dropped her near the Mahakal temple. Nobody helped her ,” he said, narrating what happened with his granddaughter on the morning of September 25.
The survivor’s brother added: “We have been facing discrimination for years. There is no sympathy for my sister among the upper castes as we are from Dohar (cattle grazing) community,” the boy said. The family claimed that the only benefit they receive from the government is ₹600 per month social justice pension, the grandfather said.
Political fury
The incident has brought politicians from almost all political parties to their small hut assuring help. “A few people helped financially but I don’t know how to secure future of the girl,” the grandfather said.
Others in the village thought that the incident would bring development there as elections are near. That was not the case. A man from Dalit Rajak community said there is no electricity in their Dalit locality for the past three months due to a faulty transformer . “The sarpanch is from the Rajput community and works only for betterment of upper castes Rajput village, who are getting regular electricity supply,” he said.
Almost half of village’s 1,900 voters are Dalits but the difference t between their part of the village and that of upper caste Rajputs is evident. “They have paved roads and we don’t have even a proper kacha road. Discrimination is part of life here,” said a former village sarpanch Brijbhan Sen, who was elected to the post when it was reserved for Dalits, a decade ago.
Data suggests that crime against Dalits in Madhya Pradesh is higher than the national average. In 2021, of 50,900 incidents of crime against SCs in India, 7,211 were reported from MP. Madhya Pradesh had a crime rate of 63.6% against SCs in 2021 against the national average of 25.3% that year. Dalits account for 16% of the state’s population and 35 of 230 assembly seats are reserved for them.
Panchayat secretary Santosh Namdeo denied allegations of discrimination saying those in Dalit village don’t pay electricity bills and no one from there applied for cooking gas cylinder under the Ujwala scheme either. “Every village has their own tradition but there is no discrimination,” he said.
Dalit politics
Both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress are trying to woo Dalit voters. The BJP carried out five Ravidas Samrasta Yatras in MP before Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of Saint Ravidas temple in Sagar on August 12, 2023. The Congress in its manifesto promised justice, equal treatment and status of Constitution Rakshak Senani to scheduled caste members. The term refers to volunteers who would create awareness about Constitutional safeguards.
The rape survivor’s village falls in Chitrakoot legislative assembly, a Congress bastion, from where Nilanshu Chaturvedi of Congress won in 2018 by defeating BJP candidate Surendra Geharwar. In this election, Chaturvedi and Geharwar will contest again. BSP candidate Shubhash Sharma is also trying to woo voters by using this incident as a major poll issue.
BJP candidate Surendra Geharwar evaded question on Dalit discrimination. “I go and eat food everywhere but a few people aren’t interested development as it will end poverty. I am against discrimination and the local MLA should take care of it and check it.”
Congress MLA Neelanshu Chaturvedi said, “I am trying hard to end discrimination for overall development but I didn’t get support of the BJP-led state government in many projects that can bring equality.”
“I don’t think anything will change,” said a woman neighbour of the rape survivor. “We got some attention because of this horrible incident with this girl as elections are around, otherwise nobody cares for her.”
A beneficiary under the state government’s Ladli scheme, in which every woman gets ₹1,000 per month as allowance, she said, “We want to be treated like Ladlis ( the pampered ones) too.”
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Singed by protests, Sena-BJP govt does quick backflip on contractual appointments
War of words as Dy CM Devendra Fadnavis claims MVA first greenlit the idea; NCP attributes it to 1998 BJP-Sena govt
Apprehensive that the Opposition’s protests might feed into resentment over the lack of government jobs, the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government has rolled back a policy on contractual recruitment of government employees. The government moved fast, being already shaky over growing quota demands from different communities, also triggered by their fear of shrinking opportunities.
The Shiv Sena (Shinde)-BJP government announced the rollback on contractual appointments on October 20, with Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis pointing fingers at the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, saying the policy was framed by it. He also claimed to have himself raised objections to it, and said that his protests against “inflated” rates awarded to private agencies for contract recruitment had led to these being curtailed to 25%.
The timeline
In the first week of September, the Shinde government cleared the empanelment of nine private agencies to provide employees to government, semi-government, urban, local body, corporation bodies, and other government establishments. The government resolution specified 70 posts under the skilled manpower category; 50 posts under the semi-skilled category; and eight posts in the skilled category through contractual recruitment.
Following this, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar’s nephew Rohit Pawar, who has been stepping up his involvement in party affairs after Ajit Pawar’s exit, announced a state-wide tour and campaign against the policy, saying contractual recruitments first began in 1998, at the time of the BJP-Shiv Sena coalition.
Congress president Nana Patole joined the conversation, accusing the government of promoting privatisation. “Contractual recruitment was a BJP strategy to hand over projects to its own kith and kin. It was in violation of democratic principles. The blatant misuse of power by the BJP amounts to open loot of taxpayers’ money,” Patole said.
At a meeting held in Mumbai last week, Sharad Pawar hit out at the government for including police forces in the ambit of contractual employment. “The police department relates to security and is a sensitive department. Allowing contractual employees in the police department on a temporary basis cannot work,” the NCP supremo said.
Fadnavis’s claims
The Deputy CM has quoted a “timeline of the proposal”, saying that on September 1, 2021, when Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray was in power along with the NCP and Congress, a nod was given to a draft for contract recruitment. Three days later, an online tender was opened, inviting companies, he said, with the last date of submission being January 31, 2022. A technical evaluation of the companies was done on February 23, 2022.
Subsequently, on April 8, 2022, Fadnavis said, a commercial tender was opened, and the same month, a meeting was held with private agencies. The Finance Department gave the approval in August that year.
Fadnavis also claimed that contract recruitments were first undertaken in Maharashtra during the tenure of Congress CM Sushilkumar Shinde in the early 2000s.
“During Thackeray’s regime, there was no recruitment in the police force. As a result, there is a shortage of 18,331 police persons… The entire process of shortlisting candidates and training them requires one-and-a-half years. Moreover, there is no facility to impart training to 18,000 people at one time.”
News no 5.
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No justice for oppressed SC, ST communities in Karnataka
Rape, murder, serious atrocities on the rise, conviction rate abysmal in Karnataka
Published: 23rd October 2023 08:15 AM | Last Updated: 23rd October 2023 08:15 AM | A+A A-
Scheduled Caste
BENGALURU: Oppressed and marginalised communities continue to get the short end of the stick,
with statistics indicating a frightening quantum of crime unleashed against them even in a progressive state like Karnataka.
The state features in the list of 15 states where 98 per cent of the most serious atrocities were perpetrated against these marginalised communities. It’s a shame, said Edwin, chief researcher, of the Citizens Vigilance and Monitoring Committee. He said universally, when incidents of crime were down during the Covid months, India saw an increase in rapes against oppressed groups, especially underaged girls. Women activists said rape is highly under-reported, even less than 10 per cent.
“If this is the reported number, imagine what the real numbers are like,” said Edwin, adding that when convictions are a mere 1-2 two per cent, who cares about the legal deterrent? He quoted the ‘Bhagat Singh vs State of Gujarat’ case where the Supreme Court laid down that “every acquittal is a miscarriage of justice”. There are many to blame for acquittals -- an apathetic police officer prosecutor or anyone in the legal system. In a special court in Tamil Nadu, when a particular prosecutor who could only get an abysmal 3 per cent conviction rate was changed, convictions went up to 50 per cent. The problem is pan-Indian, he said.
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative Chairman Venkatesh Nayak said, “There is a visceral hatred against these communities, the reason for which is hard to fathom.’’Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had recently pulled officials concerned, saying convictions had dropped to just 3 per cent. But what he missed is that in 2021, convictions were an abysmal 1.5 per cent. Karnataka did not file a single appeal even after noticing the abysmal conviction rate, said Edwin.
The Dr Ambedkar Instant Monetary Relief Foundation hands out relief to the aggrieved, yet, rape survivors or next of kin of murder victims, who are eligible for relief, have to wait endlessly. He said it’s appalling that in Karnataka, 1,150 families were denied a total of Rs 33.08 crore in legitimate dues, and is systemic torture of the downtrodden.
Former MP and second chairman of the National Commission of SCs and STs H Hanumanthappa said, “Reservation order or power is vested with the President of India. The National Commission is appointed by the President to oversee and safeguard benefits to marginalised classes. The President has to look into this. They claim to have done a lot for the marginalised but the picture is very dismal.”
News no 6.
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Dishonour Killing: Father kills 17-year-old daughter in Bengaluru for eloping with a Dalit youth
The girl was a Class 11 student and her father had stopped her from studying further after he learnt she was in love with a Dalit youth.
By Bellie Thomas
In a case of dishonour killing, a 50-year-old man surrendered before the police in Bengaluru after murdering his 17-year-old daughter for being in love with a Dalit youth with whom she had eloped last week from a relative’s house in Bengaluru.
The police had traced the runaway couple and re-united her with her parents recently.
A senior police officer said that the 17-year-old victim and her family belonged to the Vokkaliga Gowda community.
As the victim was a minor, her identity as well as that of her father, the accused, have been withheld.
Caste differences
According to the police, the incident took place around 10 am on 21 October at the Doctors Layout in Naganathapura, near Parappana Agrahara, Southeast Bengaluru.
The accused was furious as he believed that because of his daughter’s relationship with the Dalit youth, his family’s reputation was being tarnished in his village in Mysuru, a senior police officer told South First.
“The father had forced his daughter to quit college and then sent her to his sister-in-law’s house in Bengaluru to prevent his daughter from contacting her friend,” the officer added.
Police officials probing the case said that the 17-year-old was in a relationship with a Dalit youth while she was a Class 11 student. Her family members got to know of their relationship, and objected to it.
The father decided to discontinue his daughter’s studies and sent her to his sister’s house in Naganathapura that falls under the Parappana Agrahara police station limits.
On 14 October, the girl went missing from the relative’s house. The relatives informed the father and both the parents rushed to Bengaluru the same day and started to search for her.
As the missing person was a minor, the police registered a case of kidnap and began to probe the case. On 20 October, the police traced the girl along with the Dalit youth, who had taken her to one of his relatives’ house in the city.
The cops booked the man under sections of POCSO Act on charges of sexually assaulting a minor girl and arrested him. He was produced before a magistrate and remanded to judicial custody.
Enraged father
On 21 October, a quarrel ensued between the father and the daughter at their relative’s house in Naganathapura. The father grew furious and attacked his daughter with a machete.
She sustained grievous injuries to her neck and head. She succumbed to her injuries at a hospital a couple of hours after the incident, the police said.
The father also attacked his wife and his sister’s husband, both of whom tried to intervene, the police said. The father then surrendered before the Parappana Agrahara police admitting that he had killed his daughter.
He told the police that he was angry at his daughter for neglecting her studies at this tender age and not because she was in love with a Dalit youth.
The police have registered a murder case and arrested the father who was also produced before a magistrate who remanded him to judicial custody.
Courtesy : TSF
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Author.
Sivaji.
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