Curse of Caste System : Dalit man beaten to death by 46 Upper caste men in Gujarat

Gandhinagar, July 09: In yet another incident of caste-based violence, a Dalit man in Gujarat’s Sodhanpur village was allegedly lynched by 46 upper caste men belonging to the Mer community.

In an exclusive report, The Indian Express says that 42-year-old Rama Singrahiya was beaten with clubs and hacked with axes while he was sowing castor seeds in a plot of land some 30 kilometres away from Porbandar.

According to IE reports: “Three people — Parbat Karavadra, Lakhu Mer and Nilesh Babar — were Friday arrested in connection with the case.

The mob was allegedly led by village sarpanch Harbham Karavadra, who is on the run, police said. According to the police, the Mer community members claim the plot where Rama was farming is gauchar (pastoral) land, meant for cattle grazing.”

The victim’s family has refused to claim Rama’s body and has demanded that they be allowed to bury his remains in the land he was tilling. They claimed that he has been working on that land for 15 years and deserves a burial there.

IE reports that Sodhanpur village comprises Dalit families and a majority of Mer families. The former work as labourers in land owned by the latter.

Mer community members sat along the Porbandar-Jamnagar road, which runs through the village, as a group of Dalit men congregated around a paan shop nearby.

Police were deployed to monitor the situation, Bagvadar sub-inspector K A Vala said.

Police have arrested three people in connection to the murder.

The village has a population of 8,000. This includes 300 Dalit families. Porbandar district collector Dinesh Patel said Rama had submitted an application to regularise the 19 bigha of land he had been cultivating.

He claimed that the village panchayat could remove ‘encroachment’ on the gauhar land by law.

However, Rama’s friend Suman Chavda claimed 96 people from the upper caste have also encroached gauchar land.