People's Democracy

ETAWAH, UP

Anti-Dalit Atrocities Continue

STRONGLY condemning the barbaric attack launched by the police on women, dalits and other villagers in Sarai Dayanat (Saraiya) village of Etawah district, the Uttar Pradesh state secretariat of the CPI(M) has demanded strong punitive action against the guilty police officials. It is a well established fact now that the police launched this attack at the behest of the land mafia operating in the area.

The CPI(M) has also demanded that the state government must desist from uprooting the dalit people of the village, and also that it must withdraw the false cases foisted against the villagers.

The issue received wide publicity after the newspapers and TV channels highlighted it. Taking it in full seriousness, the CPI(M) had asked its state secretariat member, Mukut Singh, to visit the village and submit a report to the state leadership.

The men and women who met the CPI(M) leader in the village, described in detail the harassment, atrocities and humiliation they have been suffering for a long time. The police are here in deep collusion with the land mafia, and have off and on been destroying the hutments of the dalit sections. The goons hired by the mafioso come to the village at regular intervals, misbehave with the villagers including women, and threaten them with dire consequences in case they do not vacate their homestead plots. One of them even flaunts his passport, followed by the threat that nobody can prevent him from running away to the USA if he kills all the dalit people in the village. A common complaint of the village people was that the administration and police officials just sit tight on any complaint made in this regard; if anything, they only abuse and threaten the villagers who dare to come up with a complaint.

On behalf of the CPI(M), Mukut Singh told a press conference that the party would organise the people in the district and the state against such atrocities being perpetrated against the dalits, women and other weaker sections. He urged the district magistrate to pay a visit to the village, see the situation for himself, and take steps to put a halt to such atrocities.

Mukut Singh also highlighted another recent episode on this occasion. In Aharipur village of Bakewar police station area, some powerful people barbarically beat up Sudhir Kumar Dohre and his brother Shashi Dohre, and got Sudhir Dohre's head shaved in the shape of a crossroads. In this case, Sudhir's crime was that he had picked up and eaten the jamuns that had fallen from a powerful person's tree.

Condemning this incident in strong terms, the CPI(M) also lambasted the Bakewar police station officials for their refusal to entertain an FIR about it. The party has demanded exemplary action against the guilty persons as well as the police station's SHO.