Two bottles of alcohol, a wad of notes and a snack treat were enough to buy the complicity of the police. A sub-inspector, constable and driver did nothing when Ritu Kumari's (name changed) clothes were torn, when she was injured and burned with a cigarette. In fact, they laughed at her plight.

Sixteen-year-old Ritu became a vulnerable target for the Singh family, whose daughter had eloped with Ritu's brother in June. The incident immediately sparked a backlash as the boy belonged to the 'lower' Chamar caste and the girl to the OBC Kurmi caste. The girl's relatives came to Ritu's house that same night with a group of men and threatened to take revenge on the entire family.

"On July 31, the police arrived home. I was alone with my sister-in-law," Ritu toldThe Hindu. There were no women police personnel present when Ritu was taken to the Shastri Nagar police station.

"There, the girl's mother was at the police station. She claimed I would know where my brother and the girl were hiding. So the police detained me. From there I was taken on a search mission in a police vehicle to Bela [about 70 kilometres from Patna]."

The three police personnel, the girl's mother Munika Devi, brother Sintu Singh and brother-in-law Ashwini Kumar Singh were present in the vehicle. No woman constable was present in the vehicle either. They drove the whole night with Ritu looking for the absconding couple.

"When we reached Bela, Munika paid Rs. 10,000 to the police, gave them two bottles of alcohol and treated then to 'litti choka' [a local snack]. The rest of us were waiting inside the vehicle when Ashwini Singh attacked me," Ritu said.

According to her police statement, Ashwini told her, "How can a Chamar boy be with a Kurmi girl? Just wait and watch how you get dishonoured."

With these words, he tore off Ritu's salwar kameez and injured her hands and legs. Meanwhile, Munika threatened to avenge her daughter's "kidnapping" by "doing the same" to Ritu.

Ashwini burned the hapless victim with a cigarette. But this aspect is not part of her police statement. "I told the police, but perhaps they did not put it in my statement," she said. Ritu has nail scratches on her thigh and arms. She has also kept the torn salwar kameez.

"I was screaming and crying," said Ritu, "but the girl's mother said there was no use as the police were drunk and could not do anything. In fact, they kept laughing. When I said I would file a case, they laughed it off saying if I did that they could easily suppress the case. They said nothing worked before the power of money."

The search party found the runaway duo that night at around 2 a.m. and returned to the police station. Ritu ran away and later went to Manu Maharaj, Patna's senior superintendent of police. She narrated the incident to Mr. Maharaj after which the police recorded her statement and filed a case on August 1.

An FIR was filed against the girl's family members under the sections 341, 323, 354, 385, 34.

Initially, the police did not invoke the Scheduled Caste / Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocity Act). However, during the course of doing this story, the police sent a "correction slip" to the court to invoke the atrocity Act as well, an officer told The Hindu on Monday.

The concerned police have not been named in the FIR. When asked, the officer said their names would be added and "departmental proceedings will be initiated against them." He refused to divulge their names fearing it would jeopardise the police's reputation.

In a contradicting reply, Mr. Maharaj told The Hindu, "Why would we suspend the officers? They helped the girl." Ritu refuted this claim.

Interestingly, a few days earlier, the police had even denied the incident. The special women's police station where Ritu had gone earlier did not heed her complaint and merely directed her to the same police station she had escaped from.

Past threats

Before this incident took place, the girl's family had threatened Ritu. "Their abuses were very obscene. They threatened to abduct her if they failed to find their daughter. They swore revenge because my son ran away with a Kurmi girl," Ritu's mother told The Hindu.

Ritu has stopped attending classes due to the incident.

"I am afraid what will happen to me. When they could assault me in the presence of the police, anything can happen. Out of fear of a backlash we had to leave our house last month. We spent three days on the road," she said.

The harassment is still not over for Ritu. She suffers routine taunts from the girl's brother and other people in the neighbourhood. "They boast about the fact that they could do all that to me before the police."

Demanding justice, she said, "I want all of them, including the police, to go to jail for what they have done. Tomorrow it can happen to anybody. If I don't get justice, my college will stage protests in the streets."

Police turn a blind eye to harassment of minor Dalit girl

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/police-turn-a-blind-eye-to-harassment-of-minor-dalit-girl/article4992379.ece

IBN Live

Dalit priests train youngsters to perform religious ceremonies

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/dalit-priests-train-youngsters-to-perform-religious-ceremonies/412037-3-239.html

Upset over priests refusing to perform rituals at their ceremonies, a group of Dalits have trained themselves in the rituals and are now teaching them to Dalit youths in Kota and Bundi districts of Rajasthan.

The Dalit priests belonging to Valmiki community are conducting all religious rituals from births, weddings to death for all people irrespective of their caste.

Natulal Verma (58), a Dalit priest, said he had learnt the religious ceremonies after a priest refused to solemnise his relative's marriage. "An upper-caste priest refused to solemnise the marriage of my Dalit relative in Jaipur in the 90s. That incident led to my determination to be a priest," Verma said, adding that with his limited religious knowledge, he had performed the wedding ceremony at that time.

"At present, I am a fully-trained priest and have taught about 24 youths in Kota and Bundi districts how to perform religious ceremonies," Verma said. Verma and others newly-trained priests are now in great demand among Dalit and many households in the Kota and Bundi regions. "Some progressive priests are helping us," he said.

The Times Of India

Dalits told to keep distance from temple

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vadodara/Dalits-told-to-keep-distance-from-temple/articleshow/21633886.cms

ANAND: Dalits in Bamroli village of Anand's Petlad taluka have been banned from entering the village temple

to goddess Khodiyar.

The decision was taken by the village panchayat after a dalit woman, Meena Shenva, requested the village priest to allow her into the temple to offer prayers on Vad Savitri on June 26. After being turned away, Shenva approached 50 of her village dalit community members from and raised the issue with them.

A few days later, the village panchayat also resolved that dalits not be allowed to enter the temple and that offer prayers through a small opening on a wall 100 metres away from the main temple entrance. This shocked Shenva. The temple priest insisted that this was a tradition at temple. After few days the police registered an FIR against the temple priest Rajnikant Kiritbhai and the panchayat at the Mahelva police station. Meena now fears that she will be pressurized to withdraw the case.

Deputy superintendent of police, Anand, Rajendra Asari, told TOI: "It's true. We had arrested the accused but they are out on bail. Meanwhile district authorities too have been informed of the incident and asked to follow up. The case is now in court and sub-judice. I will not be able to comment any further."

"The wall, which is 100 metres away from the temple, had a small indent in which dalits were supposed to make their offerings to the goddess. We hope Meena's efforts will give voice to the problems of dalits who live in surrounding areas of Bamroli and want to pray at the temple," says Meena's brother, Amrut Shenva.

Amrut Shenva, who lives in nearby Simrada village added, "I hope the police action bears fruit. We also fear for Meena who took this bold step. There will be lot of pressure on her to withdraw the case."

The Tribune

'Send us anywhere, but we won't go back to Mirchpur'

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2013/20130806/main4.htm

SC-appointed team meets displaced families, to submit report

Deepender Deswal/TNSHisar, August 5

The Dalit families that fled Hisar's Mirchpur village after caste violence in 2010 today told a Supreme Court-appointed team they would not return as they feared for their safety.

Narrating their tales to the team of legal experts and social scientists — including Sessions Judge Ajay Jain and Shamim Modi of Mumbai's Tata Institute of Social Sciences — the victims said they wanted to resettle elsewhere as returning to the native village was fraught with danger.

"How can anybody live under constant threat? The situation has not changed much in our village. The Jats are still as inimical to us as they were before. Move out the CRPF deployed in the village and you will see the consequences in two days," Ramesh Kumar, a middle-age Dalit man, told the team. About 135 families have been living at a farmhouse on the outskirts of Hisar since January 2011.

Dalit settlements were targeted and torched in Mirchpur village by members of the dominant caste on April 21, 2010, resulting in the death of Tara Chand, 70, and his physically-challenged daughter. The court had convicted 15 persons and acquitted 82 in the case.

Mincing no words, Gulab Singh, an elderly man, said: Send us to other states or even Pakistan, but we will not go back to Mirchpur. "There is no work for us in 20 adjoining villages. Nobody offers us even a glass of 'seet' (left over after extracting butter from yogurt, 'seet' is usually distributed by cattle rearing farmers free of cost to lower caste).

What will we do there?" he said. When the team members asked the families what they wanted, they stated in unison: "Give us homes anywhere near the town so we can work and feed their children. We have suffered enough and we don't want to endanger our lives by going back to our village."

Living in poor conditions at the farmhouse, the displaced villagers blamed the state government. We have been denied basic amenities such as water, electricity and toilets despite the Supreme Court's directions, they said. Our children are being denied admission in nearby government schools at the behest of the upper caste people, they said.

"We are grateful to Ved Pal Tanwar, the owner of the farmhouse, who has given us shelter. The government wants to evict us and has framed Tanwar in criminal cases. The apex court directed the government to provide two quintal grain per family in two months, but we have not got the quota," said a villager.

Bhoop Singh, an octogenarian who fractured his hand during the attack by Jats, said his son Vicky, who with other witnesses testified against the accused leading to the conviction of 15 persons, had died under mysterious circumstances. "I suspect he was murdered. I wrote to the police for a probe, but they did not register a case and called my son's case an accidental death," he said.

Earlier, the team visited the 50-odd families living in Mirchpur village where CRPF men provide them security.

The team would submit its report to the Supreme Court.

The Indian Express

Two years since clashes, Mirchpur's Dalits still stay away from their homes

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/two-years-since-clashes-mirchpurs-dalits-still-stay-away-from-their-homes/1151740/

For the 80 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel deployed in Haryana's Mirchpur village, there is virtually nothing to protect but empty houses and deserted streets. More than two years after communal clashes forced around 175 Dalit families to flee the village, a large number of their houses still remain locked as an uneasy calm prevails here.

In April, 2010, a large number of Jats attacked the Dalit locality and burnt houses, resulting in the death of 70-year-old Tara Chand and his physically challenged daughter Suman. The Supreme Court, while hearing a petition in this regard, recently slammed the Haryana government and directed it to submit a report detailing the actions it has taken for the affected Dalit families. A team, appointed by the apex court, visited Mirchpur on Monday to assess the plight of the Dalits.

Most of those who fled, however, are yet to return and have been camping at various locations in and around Hisar, while their houses have been reduced to rubble. Only a few youngsters and a bunch of families visit their homes, particularly during the monsoon.

"We cannot even imagine living here. We have no other place to live so we have put up tents by the road which become inhabitable during the monsoon as water enters them. We come to our houses in the village after the rains to clean the area, stay for a couple of days and then move out again. The Jats of our village have threatened not to let us live here at any cost. It is only because of the CRPF that we even dare to come," said Krishna, who along with her sons Sonu (12) and Monu (10) visited their house and then left. Local politician Ved Pal Tanwar has accommodated 100 of the affected families at his farmhouse in Hisar.

What has made it worse for the Dalits, most of whom are labourers, is that the land owners in the village have stopped employing them. "We used to work in the fields owned by Jats and earn our livelihood. After April, 2010, they have stopped employing us. They have started getting labourers from Bihar and other villages around Mirchpur. We have been reduced to live like beggars," said Sanjay Kumar, another Mirchpur Dalit.

It is the CRPF's presence that leads to some sort of normality in the village. There are around six CRPF posts in and around the village with 60 personnel lodged at the village school ready to meet any exigency. The Haryana Police has also set up a police post on the outskirts of the village to avert any untoward incident.

"There is nothing we can do. The district administration and state government have reconstructed the houses that were damaged in April 2010 but nobody lives in them. It is only because the CRPF is deployed here that the Jats are not reacting. The day the CRPF moves out, and if we are found in our houses, we will be killed," said Sajna, a Dalit leader of Mirchpur village.

The state government has even reconstructed the house owned by Tara Chand, who died in the arson, but nobody lives here. "The village mostly bears a deserted look. It is only after the rains that a few families return and clean their houses of waterlogging that is a major problem in this part of the village. We do our duty in shifts and have to be alert round-the-clock. One never knows when the situation will escalate and take an ugly turn," a CRPF personnel told The Indian Express.

To add to the Dalit woes, the village's sewerage system has been built in such a way that waste from the Jat houses flow through Dalit homes. "The area where we have our houses becomes a complete mess during the rains. All the waste from Jats' houses pass through the drains that ultimately end up in two ponds on the side of our houses. Our children are frequently affected by communicable diseases," said Sonu, another resident.

Hindustan Times

SC order on reservation gets flak in LS

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/SC-order-on-reservation-gets-flak-in-LS/Article1-1103617.aspx

The recent Supreme Court judgement on reservation on Monday came in for criticism in the Lok Sabha with members claiming that it would hit hard 80% population of the country comprising SC, ST and backwards classes.

The judgement disallowing reservation in promotion in the faculty of AIIMS also saw members expressing concern over the erosion of Parliament's supremacy and demanding urgent amendment to the constitution to annul the apex court verdict.

Raising the issue during Zero Hour, JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav lamented that the courts have been repeatedly striking down legislations which are meant to benefit weaker sections.

He said while the judiciary was doing a good work in exposing corruption, it was negating the laws unanimously passed by all parties on social issues like reservation.

"They always do something so that Parliament does not run," Yadav said regretting that the constitution bench had passed the order on the last day of the tenure of Chief Justice Altamas Kabir, who retired recently.

The matter of concern was that this apex court order was not just applicable to the AIIMS but on all such institutions.

"Reservation is a hard-earned achievement of the people after a long struggle. Some way should be found by the government to restore the rights of 80% of the people of the country," Yadav said.

Seconding the JD(U) leader, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav sought to know whether the people of weaker sections were "only meant to sweep the floors or be a chaprasi or a chowkidar".

He said there were only 2% people in high posts among the backward classes, who constitute 54% of the population.

The SP chief also warned of nationwide protests if the government did nothing to annul the Supreme Court order.

Dara Singh Chauhan (BSP) said the situation would not have arisen if Parliament had passed the reservation in promotion bill which was being strongly advocated by BSP supremo Mayawati.

PL Punia (Cong) said it was a matter of regret that the Supreme Court had not considered several important decisions taken by Parliament to give justice to weaker sections through reservation.

"Will only five people (bench of the apex court) decide the future of the country or the representatives sitting in Parliament?" he asked.

The Hindu

Dalit students take out Collectorate march

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/dalit-students-take-out-collectorate-march/article4994537.ece

More than hundred students of Dr. Ambedkar Adi Dravidar Girls' Hostel, Chinna Chokkikulam, walked out of their hostel and marched towards the Collectorate to represent their grievances of water shortage and lack of proper bathroom facilities in the hostel.

However, the students were intercepted by police and Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department Officials at the Collectorate entrance, who told them that the Collector was not available but collected the petition from them.

The Collector was available, said an official when contacted.

The hostel inmates after patiently waiting all these days decided to come out of their hostel and take up the issue with the Collector, who, they feel, alone can solve the problem, as it had not been adequately represented, said a hostel student.

Irregular water supply

The major complaints of the girl students were that they faced irregular supply of water and shortage of support staff. Though the policy note of Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department says that it is mandatory that every hostel should have water filters, here the water filters are dysfunctional.

The Hindu had already reported the woes of hostel students (February, 14, 2013) but the students said, the filters had not been replaced till now.

The students alleged that shortage of staff had resulted in students throwing on the roles of cook and cleaning toilets. The lavatory facilities are not adequate in the hostel and requested that the authorities concerned build overhead water tanks to meet the water requirement.

Most of the students staying in these hostels are first generation learners and hail from working class and agricultural labourer family backgrounds from Dalit castes.

The students with a lot of hesitation shared that they were asked by the hostel staff not to stay in hostels on weekends and leave for their homes.

Fearing backlash from the officials, the students remained silent over the issue and it had been almost a year, so we decided to meet the Collector said one of the students who wished to maintain anonymity.

The hostel warden, when contacted, said that there was water shortage but it had been the situation across the city and denied other allegations levelled by the students.

The Hindu

Ilavarasan's watch gives time of impact

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/ilavarasans-watch-gives-time-of-impact/article4994210.ece

Investigators probing the death of the Dalit youth E. Ilavarasan have more evidence to suspect that it was a case of suicide, though his family is alleging that it could be a murder.

This time, it is the watch of the victim recovered from the scene where his body was found along the railway track on July 4 in Dharmapuri.

The watch stopped functioning at 1.20 p.m. On suspicion that the watch came apart when Ilavarasan was hit by the speeding train, police sought to know the exact time when the Coimbatore-Mumbai Kurla Expressed crossed the location.

News Monitor by Girish Pant

--
.Arun Khote
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of "Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC")
...................................................................
Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre- PMARC has been initiated with the support from group of senior journalists, social activists, academics and intellectuals from Dalit and civil society to advocate and facilitate Dalits issues in the mainstream media. To create proper & adequate space with the Dalit perspective in the mainstream media national/ International on Dalit issues is primary objective of the PMARC.