मुंबई के संजय गांधी नेशनल पार्क, बोरिवली में अवैध अतिक्रमण हटाने पहुंची वन विभाग और पुलिस की टीम पर स्थानीय निवासियों ने पथराव कर दिया, जिससे माहौल तनावपूर्ण हो गया। अदालत द्वारा गैर‑आदिवासी अतिक्रमण हटाने का आदेश दिए जाने के बाद जब कार्रवाई शुरू हुई, तो वहां रह रहे परिवारों ने… pic.twitter.com/RtxetyZZFV

— NDTV India (@ndtvindia) January 26, 2026

Meanwhile Anish Gavande, activist has, in an open lettrer to Ganesh Naik, Maharashtra Minister for Forests, appealed for the immediate halt in demolitions and protection of their life and property. This letter was made public at 6 p.m. on Monday, January 26. (NCPSP/NS/AG/27012026/001 Date: 27 January, 2026)

Quoting credible reports, Gavande states that “multiple Adivasi hamlets are facing demolition from January 19 this year without completed surveys, verified resident lists, or the lawful conclusion of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) process. Proceeding with evictions is a direct violation of Sections 4(1) and 4(5) of the Forest Rights Act, 2006, which explicitly prohibit eviction until all individual and community claims are verified through the Gram Sabhas. Eviction notices have been pasted late at night, with incorrect names and without field verification, denying residents a fair opportunity to seek legal remedy.”

Gavande also states that “equally concerning is the withdrawal of essential services. Electricity has been cut, BEST bus services suspended, and community facilities shut, with children being unable to attend school…..The justification that action is limited to so-called “re-encroachers” ignores the structural failure of rehabilitation. For Adivasi families whose livelihoods depend on land, livestock, and forest ecology, relocation to small SRA flats is neither viable nor lawful rehabilitation. This reality cannot be erased through administrative labelling. Conservation cannot be pursued by bypassing the law, particularly when large infrastructure projects continue within the same forest landscape.”

He has urged for the immediate halt all demolition activity, restore essential services, and ensure that no eviction proceeds until all FRA claims are lawfully settled through the Gram Sabha process. Failing timely intervention, affected communities and those supporting them will have no option but to intensify democratic protest and pursue all available legal and constitutional remedies.”

The letter may be seen here.

Finally the pressure worked and the demolitions were halted.

At 6.30 p.m. on January 27, IANS reported that Minister Ganesh Naik says, “The thing is that National Park is sensitive. Honorable High Court has ordered them to vacate the park. But still, without informing people it is not right to remove them. We have given houses to many people, but still they are not going. So, to find out whether it is true or false, a meeting is being held. I will inform you again after the meeting…”

Mumbai, Maharashtra: On Stone pelting situation in Borivali National Park Minister Ganesh Naik says, “The thing is that National Park is sensitive. Honorable High Court has ordered them to vacate the park. But still, without informing people it is not right to remove them. We… pic.twitter.com/k9yeJ6tYJJ

— IANS (@ians_india) January 27, 2026

Related:

Mumbai: Hundreds of people displaced after demolitions in Jai Bhim Nagar

Demolitions in Mumbai’s Behrampada before Eid

BJP MLA Nitesh Rane leads Hindutva Rally in Govandi, demands demolition of “illegal Masjids and Madrasa”

Govandi slum demolition: Temporary halt after protests outside BMC office by residents, those rendered homeless to rebuild their homes at the same site

The post Demolition of Adivasi homes at Sanjay Gandhi National Park on Republic Day appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Historical practices underscore the institutional roots of this humiliation, which are alarmingly mirrored and even innovated upon in contemporary India. Accounts from the Peshwa rule describe how untouchables were prevented from using public streets due to the polluting effect of their shadow; in Poona, they were forced to wear a broom attached to their waist to sweep away their footprints. Visuals of such a humiliating practice has been immortalised by Dalit writers and poets (Dalit shahirs)—performers in the late 19^th and 20^th centuries—that created a body of literature and theatre known as Dalit jalse.[1] Such ritual enforcement of segregation persists today in modernised forms of humiliation. This includes incidents where a 12-year-old Dalit boy died by suicide after being locked in a cowshed and shamed for accidentally entering an upper-caste house in Himachal Pradesh (October 2025), or the horrific case of a 14-year-old Dalit child forced to consume his own faeces (July 2020).

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The continuance –in the 21^st century — of these ritualistic forms of violence, seven decades after India’s independence, confirms a profound failure of the constitutional promise of equality. The violence is often preceded by symbolic degradation—the imposition of dominant caste thought and perception—which acts as a necessary pre-condition for the subsequent material and physical violence. This structural denial of humanity maintains the cultural and ritual authority of the caste system, fundamentally resisting constitutional mandates.

In 1950, the Constitution of India promised a radical rupture: the abolition of untouchability (Article 17), equality before the law (Article 14), and a vision of dignity that sought to transcend birth-based hierarchy. Even then, as Indians celebrated a vision of equality and non-discrimination, there was vocal resistance (in the Constituent Assembly) to a complete and total abolition of Caste itself at the time of the Constituent Assembly debates; finally, as a compromise, Article 17 was enacted. Seven decades later, the persistence and intensification of violence against Dalits across regions and institutions suggest that even the limited promise remains incomplete.

In recent years, this crude form of violence and exclusion has acquired new visibility — and new legitimacy. Incidents of caste humiliation no longer remain confined to villages or agrarian conflicts; they permeate public spaces, reflective of the re-legitimisation of this othering by the dominance of the political ideology ruling at the Centre and over a dozen states: Schools, cities, social media, and even the judiciary’s symbolic space have been breached: it is as if a shrill messaging is being broadcast of the casteist majoritarian regime in power; that caste exclusion and hierarchy is not simply justified but will be violently imposed. When an advocate of India’s apex court “dares” flinging a shoe at the present Chief Justice of India (CJI), a Buddhist and this is followed by singular racial abuse online, it shatters the comforting belief that institutional achievement insulates against stigma. Such episodes illuminate a wider social truth: caste not only continues to function as India’s deepest grammar of power, adapting to modern structures rather than disappearing within them. Caste resurgence is the order of the day, being re-imposed, brutally by this dispensation. What India is witnessing is the classic form of counter-revolution.

This article maps this regression. Mostly drawing upon recent incidents documented in 2025 —including those in Thoothukudi, Panvel, Meerut, and Madhya Pradesh—it reconstructs what can be termed the “new architecture of caste attacks.” Major incidents before 2025 have also been included to show a pattern. Violence and exclusion today occur through overlapping arenas: the village, the city, the school, the digital sphere, and the state itself. Each arena reveals how caste’s social logic survives despite constitutional guarantees.

Notably, all the incidents referred to in this piece has been provided in detail in a separate document below:

The Ascending Hierarchy of Attack: From ritual to institutional apex

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar envisioned the Constitution as a path towards both a moral and social revolution. The formal abolition of untouchability was meant not merely to criminalise discrimination but to destroy its social roots. Yet Ambedkar warned in the Constituent Assembly that “political equality” without “social and economic equality” would leave democracy vulnerable to caste hierarchy’s return.

The decades following independence saw significant legislative advances—the Protection of Civil Rights Act (1955), the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act (1989)—but these were accompanied by obdurate police and administrative non-application and followed by a persistent social backlash. Caste privilege adapted: open exclusion gave way to subtler forms of humiliation and violence disguised as defence of “tradition,” “honour,” or “religion.”

The post-2014 political climate added a new layer. In 1999, India had already experienced a glimpse of what was in store to come, when the National Democratic Alliance (in its first form) had the RSS-inspired Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) only as a minority. Yet, following the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, the ghastly lynching of five Dalit men in the village of Dulina, Jhajjar district, Haryana, after being falsely accused of cow slaughter, on October 15, 2002, shook the nation. A spate of such crimes continued and were documented.[2] The complicity of the police and the alleged involvement of far right organisations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) was part of the details recorded.

The ascent of cultural majoritarianism, the mainstreaming of “Sanatani” rhetoric, and the weaponisation of social media have together normalised casteist discourse while weakening institutional checks. The result is not the re-emergence of caste, but its reconfiguration through new technologies, idioms, and legitimations.

The analysis of caste violence must recognise its escalating and diversifying trajectory. The attacks are no longer confined solely to remote rural pockets but have ascended a hierarchy of space and institution, moving from localised ritual control to sophisticated psychological control in urban institutions, and finally culminating in explicit political and ideological confrontation with the nation’s highest constitutional offices.

The sheer volume of reported cases underscores the crisis. According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, in 2023, 57,789 cases of crimes against SCs were registered, a slight 0.4% increase from 57,582 cases in 2022. Looking at a wider period reveals a substantial escalation. A study by the Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network noted a 177.6% rise in crimes against SCs between 1991 and 2021.

This violence is not exclusive to villages; urban centres exhibit alarming rates. As per the statistics, Uttar Pradesh (15,130 cases) reported the highest number of crimes against SCs, followed by Rajasthan (8,449), Madhya Pradesh (8,232), and Bihar (7,064). Despite these statistics, the true incidence is severely underreported. Research suggests that only about 5% of assaults are officially recorded, often due to police indifference, bribery demands, or outright dismissal of complaints, particularly rape reports.

The structural progression of violence can be categorised across distinct spheres, illustrating the systemic nature of exclusion in the modern Republic.

Table 1: Typology of Caste Atrocities: The continuum of humiliation

 Ground Zero: Traditional sites of visceral violence (village to street)

Despite rapid urbanisation, the village remains the most enduring theatre of caste violence. In rural Madhya Pradesh, Dalit families were beaten and their seeds confiscated for cultivating common land (July 2025); in Chhatarpur, twenty families faced social boycott for accepting prasad from a Dalit neighbour (January 2025). Similar patterns appear across Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Bihar.

1. Controlling the Essentials: Land, water, and ritual space

In rural India, the primary mechanisms of caste control revolve around denying access to essential resources and ritual spaces, thereby enforcing physical and ritual segregation. Access to water, a non-negotiable human right, remains violently conditional upon caste status. The case of the 8-year-old Dalit boy in Barmer, Rajasthan, who was severely beaten and hung upside down for touching a water pot intended for upper castes, is a visceral demonstration of this control (September 2025). Similarly, the suicide of the 12-year-old Dalit boy in Himachal Pradesh was a direct consequence of humiliation for trespassing on upper-caste property (October 2025).

Ritual spaces, intended to be public, are often violently guarded to enforce untouchability. Dalits have been barred from offering prayers at a Durga Puja Pandal in Madhya Pradesh (September 2025) and violently assaulted for attempting to enter a temple during a religious procession in Churu, Rajasthan (September 2025). The Madras High Court was recently compelled to intervene and issue instructions to the Tenkasi administration regarding the equitable distribution of water due to persistent caste bias, highlighting how essential services are used as weapons of caste control (July 2025). The requirement for police to guard a Dalit wedding in Gujarat, sometimes using drones, underscores the fragility of civil rights protection when faced with entrenched local hierarchy (May 2025).

2. Policing Dalit Assertion: Rites of passage and mobility

Caste violence is inherently triggered not just by deviation from purity codes but by the assertion of equality and self-respect. This is most vividly manifest in attacks aimed at policing Dalit mobility and rites of passage, particularly wedding processions (baraats).

The act of a Dalit groom riding a horse, traditionally reserved for dominant castes, often leads to violence. Incidents across Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan involve grooms being pulled off their horses and guests being attacked (February 2025). This violence becomes ideologically intensified when Dalit identity is asserted. In Mathura, a Dalit baraat was attacked with stones and sticks after the Thakur community objected to the playing of songs related to Dr. Ambedkar and the Jatav community (July 2025). This deliberate suppression of public visibility and self-respect confirms that the violence is preventative, aimed at suppressing any public display of Dalit parity, thereby revealing the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of caste control.

Furthermore, intimate choices that threaten the integrity of caste endogamy are met with brutal force. Honor killings and extreme violence against inter-caste relationships are widespread. A Dalit youth in Tamil Nadu was hacked to death over an inter-caste relationship, with his girlfriend implicating her own family. In another incident, a Dalit boy in Tamil Nadu was stripped, beaten, and subjected to caste slurs for meeting a Vanniyar girl. (July 2025) The alleged honour killing of a Dalit man in Pune over his marriage to a Maratha woman, characterised by his family as a caste murder, confirms that this policing of reproductive choices transcends the rural-urban divide (February 2025).

3. The geography of forced servitude and political disobedience

Economic empowerment and political participation by Dalits are routinely met with retributive violence designed to re-establish feudal control. Violence often flares up when Dalits refuse forced labour or assert their rights over agricultural resources. In Madhya Pradesh, a Dalit youth was brutally beaten and his house set ablaze for refusing to work as a labourer (August 2025). Other attacks have involved dominant caste men snatching seeds and assaulting Dalit families cultivating their land (June 2025).

The targeting extends explicitly to Dalit political empowerment. A Dalit woman Sarpanch and her husband in Rajasthan were attacked with an axe over disputes regarding MNREGA road work (June 2025). This illustrates that achieving political mobility through constitutional offices is tolerated only as long as it does not challenge the economic and social dominance of local power structures. When a Dalit woman attempts to administer public projects (MNREGA), the challenge to local caste authority is met with physical terror, fundamentally linking economic development to caste subjugation.

The Modern Crucible: Institutionalised discrimination (city to school)

Cities were once imagined as caste’s antithesis—sites of anonymity and merit. Yet attacks on Dalit wedding processions in Agra and Meerut, and stone-pelting during Ambedkar-Jayanti rallies in Rajasthan, show that urbanity merely relocates caste antagonism.

Public celebrations become battlegrounds for visibility. The sight of a Dalit groom on a horse, or the sound of Ambedkarite songs, is treated as provocation. The violence is performative: it polices who may occupy the street, who may celebrate publicly, and which forms of joy are legitimate. In several districts, local authorities have begun escorting Dalit weddings with police and drones—an image at once tragic and telling.

Urban caste violence underscores how modern citizenship collides with inherited status. It also demonstrates the selective nature of state protection: preventive deployment rather than structural reform, treating equality as an event to be managed, not a norm to be lived.

1. The Cost of Merit: Caste in elite academia

Caste discrimination has infiltrated the highest echelons of Indian society, shifting the site of exclusion from the village field to the university lecture hall, resulting in a disturbing incidence of student suicides. Elite educational institutions, far from being meritocratic safe spaces, operate under a constant atmosphere of systemic, psychological violence against marginalised students. This structural violence is enacted through ridicule, ostracism, administrative bias, and academic sabotage.

Between November and December 2025 itself, three deaths of Dalit students across India underscored the lethal intersection of caste discrimination, institutional neglect, and structural exclusion in educational spaces. On November 6, a 19-year-old Dalit student of Deshbandhu College, Delhi University, and sister of JNUSU presidential candidate Raj Ratan Rajoriya, was found dead in her Govindpuri rented flat, with BAPSA alleging grave procedural lapses by the police, absence of medical personnel and female officers, and broader “institutional apathy” by Delhi University, including its failure to provide adequate hostel accommodation for marginalised students, forcing them into unsafe and isolating housing conditions. On November 20, an 18-year-old Dalit student, S Gajini, from Government Arignar Anna Arts College in Villupuram, succumbed to injuries ten days after attempting suicide, allegedly driven by caste-based abuse and assault by men from a dominant caste following a road altercation; despite an FIR under the SC/ST Act, the accused remain unidentified. On December 12, a 17-year-old Dalit student at a DIET institute in Kurnool died by suicide after prolonged distress linked to her struggle with English-medium coursework, highlighting how language barriers, caste location, and lack of institutional academic support continue to disproportionately burden first-generation and marginalised learners.

The environment becomes hostile because of the active weaponisation of meritocracy. Dalit students are frequently taunted as “non-meritorious” or “quota products”. This psychological assault on their intellect and dignity constitutes epistemic violence, a modernised replacement for ritual pollution, turning academic spaces into sites of structural harassment.

Case studies vividly illustrate this pattern:

• Rohith Vemula, 2016 (Hyderabad University)[3]: Vemula’s administrative exclusion, which forced him and four others to sleep in a makeshift “Dalit ghetto,” was recognised by his peers as a modern form of villevarda. While his death sparked a national political movement, the later police closure report attempted to undermine the caste-based motivation by questioning his Scheduled Caste status, thereby reinforcing the pernicious stigma of “fake merit”.
• Darshan Solanki, 2023 (IIT Bombay)[4]: Solanki died by suicide after allegedly facing ostracisation and ridicule from peers for asking basic questions in technical subjects. The institutional response from IIT Bombay, which prematurely denied any caste discrimination before a full inquiry was completed, exemplified institutional denial and refusal to confront endemic caste bias.

This environment of toxic exclusion is responsible for widespread trauma, with reports indicating that 80% of suicides in seven IITs were committed by Dalit students. Furthermore, the bias extends beyond performance, affecting administrative representation. Ten Dalit professors at Bangalore University resigned from their administrative roles, citing discrimination. The perpetuation of this violence reveals a fundamental rigidity: caste acts as a boundary that professional success cannot breach.

Table 2: Manifestations of exclusion in educational institutions

2. Invisible Barriers: Urban exclusion and professional glass ceilings

For Dalits who successfully navigate the hostile academic environment and achieve high professional status, the violence persists, though it adopts subtler, institutionalised forms. This reality demonstrates that economic independence does not translate into the annihilation of caste.

The suicide of Dalit IPS officer Puran Kumar, who questioned unfair promotions and postings, tragically illustrated that rank and wealth do not grant immunity; caste prejudice penetrates the highest echelons of bureaucracy (October 2025). Similarly, a Dalit Assistant Professor at SV Veterinary University was subjected to public humiliation when his chair was allegedly removed, forcing him to perform his duties while sitting on the floor (June 2025).

Discrimination is also structural in the dynamic urban private sector. Research indicates that job applicants with a Dalit name face significant discrimination, having approximately two-thirds the odds of receiving an interview compared to dominant-caste Hindu applicants with equivalent qualifications. This demonstrates that social exclusion is not a rural remnant but is actively practiced in the most modern sectors of the economy. This systemic sabotage of upward mobility means that educational and professional achievements merely shift the form of violence from physical assault to debilitating psychological and institutional harassment.

3. The digitalisation of hate and incitement

The rise of digital media has provided a new, pervasive medium for the normalisation and amplification of caste hatred. Based on a 2019 report by the human rights organisation Equality Labs, caste-based hate speech was found to make up 13% of the hate content reviewed on Facebook India. This digital sphere has facilitated the de facto normalisation of caste-hate speech and is recognised as a medium for oppressing and humiliating Dalits.

This toxic online envionment is actively utilized by right-wing extremist organisations, which have grown in prominence, sometimes using platforms like Instagram to promote hateful content and even fundraising. Major digital platforms demonstrated a historical disregard for addressing this issue, taking years to incorporate “caste” as a protected characteristic in their hate speech policies, and often failing to list it as an option in their reporting forms.

This digital rhetoric creates a climate of ideological validation that can incite physical violence. Harassment campaigns against high-profile Dalit figures, such as the Chief Justice of India, function as a coordinated form of symbolic violence intended to normalise the rejection of constitutional equality and test the boundaries of legal impunity.

The Politicalisation of Caste Warfare: The current regime context

Beyond violence lies symbolic appropriation. Dalit culture—its festivals, songs, and icons—is increasingly commodified or sanitised within a homogenised “Sanatani” narrative. The exclusion of India’s tribal President from the Ram Mandir inauguration exemplifies this politics of selective inclusion: representation without recognition.

In West Bengal, the “vegetarianisation” of Durga Puja since 2019 reflects a subtler transformation. Non-Sanatani groups, including many Dalit and Bahujan communities, are labelled “non-sattvic,” their rituals cast as impure. This recoding of religiosity transforms caste into cultural hierarchy.

At the same time, Ambedkar’s image is everywhere—on posters, statues, and government programmes—yet his emancipatory thought is domesticated. The appropriation of Ambedkar without the politics of equality amounts to symbolic capture: a neutralised memory that conceals continuing oppression.

Cultural exclusion thus performs two contradictory gestures—erasure and incorporation—both of which depoliticise Dalit assertion while reaffirming upper-caste control over meaning.

1. The Rise of Neo-Traditionalism: Sanatana dharma and exclusion

The period following 2014 has been marked by a significant ideological shift, where the ruling party’s emphasis on Hindu nationalism has provided an explicit political and cultural sanction for traditional caste principles. The concept of Sanatana Dharma has become a central ideological tool. Critics argue that this philosophy inherently justifies and maintains the rigid caste hierarchy, contrasting sharply with the constitutional ideals of liberty and equality. Any critique of caste discrimination, such as those made by Udhayanidhi Stalin regarding the system prevalent in Sanatana Dharma, is immediately framed by the dominant political ecosystem as an attack on Hinduism, aimed at polarising the electorate.

This ideological polarisation was directly responsible for the attempted shoe attack on Chief Justice B.R. Gavai (October 2025). The attacker, Rakesh Kishore, specifically shouted, “Sanatan ka apmaan nahi sahenge” (We will not tolerate the insult of Sanatan Dharma). This action linked a perceived anti-Hindu judicial stance (related to the Khajuraho deity ruling) directly to the caste identity of the judge. The incident functioned as an ideological declaration: constitutional morality, when used by a Dalit judge to challenge majoritarian religious claims, is deemed an “insult” that must be violently resisted, placing religious tradition above constitutional law.

2. Selective appropriation of Ambedkar and Hindutva strategy

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its political affiliates have engaged in a sustained and deliberate political strategy to appropriate the legacy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, primarily to secure electoral gains and neutralise the profound ideological threat his philosophy poses to the foundational principles of Hindutva.

This strategy involves selectively invoking aspects of Ambedkar’s life, such as his conversion to Buddhism, while simultaneously minimising or ignoring his radical denunciation of Hinduism as being incompatible with democratic values. The attempt is to portray Ambedkar as a “Hindu social reformer” rather than a foundational critic of the caste system, thereby drawing Dalit politics into a unified, but hierarchical, “Hindu” fold. This co-option strategy is further highlighted by political attempts to link Ambedkar to RSS founders, despite historical evidence to the contrary.

The tactical use of Ambedkar’s image is often contradicted by ground realities. For instance, symbolic gestures are performed alongside reported policy failures, such as the denial of scholarships to 3,500 Dalit students in Uttar Pradesh, forcing public condemnation from Dalit leaders (June 2025). This gap between rhetoric and action confirms that the strategy is one of symbolic integration designed to neutralise dissent, rather than a genuine commitment to substantive social justice.

3. Symbolic constitutional exclusion

The pattern of exclusion extends to high constitutional functionaries from marginalised communities. The noticeable absence of President Droupadi Murmu, an Adivasi (Scheduled Tribe) and the constitutional head of state, from the inauguration of the highly politicised Ram Mandir in Ayodhya was widely criticised by opposition leaders, who connected it to her earlier exclusion from the Parliament building inauguration.

Although President Murmu belongs to the Adivasi community, the incident forms part of a larger pattern of ritual exclusion of marginalised constitutional authorities from highly faith-based state functions. The event, serving as a defining moment for the new majoritarian ideology, suggests a reordering of constitutional hierarchy. The exclusion of the head of state, particularly one from a marginalised background, implies that ritual purity and majoritarian religious identity are positioned to supersede constitutional hierarchy and the democratic principle of representation.

The Assault on the Constitutional Apex: Targeting the judiciary

1. The CJI Incident: From judicial remark to caste attack

The attempted shoe attack on Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai stands as the most explicit act of caste-based political defiance directed at the core institutions of the Republic. The violence was ideologically motivated, following the CJI’s remarks during a hearing about a Vishnu idol in Khajuraho.

The caste dimension was immediately clear. The ideological defence of the attacker, Rakesh Kishore, who invoked Sanatan Dharma, and the support of influential right-wing figures like YouTuber Ajeet Bharti, who called Gavai a “lousy, undeserving judge” and accused him of “anti-Hindu sentiments”, establishes a crucial political point. The attack was not aimed at judicial competence but at the perceived “anti-Sanatan” judicial decision, rooted in the judge’s Dalit identity. This confrontation establishes that challenging ritual caste authority through constitutional interpretation is now publicly deemed an act of ideological treason.

2. Impunity and state response

The response of the state apparatus to the assault and subsequent incitement has set a dangerous precedent of selective justice. The attacker, Rakesh Kishore, was released shortly after questioning because the CJI declined to press charges. Kishore subsequently expressed no remorse for his actions.

Crucially, those who digitally incited further violence were also handled with remarkable leniency. YouTuber Ajeet Bharti, who made provocative remarks about the CJI and allegedly suggested actions such as spitting on the judge, was briefly taken in for questioning by Noida Police but was not arrested and was later released.

This lenient approach towards both the physical attacker and the digital instigator demonstrates a deep political hesitation to punish ideologically driven attacks rooted in majoritarian caste sentiment, even when directed at the highest judicial authority. This establishes a political environment that minimises the gravity of such threats, potentially intimidating the judiciary and compromising its ability to enforce social justice laws without fear of retribution.

Gendered Violence and Custodial Deaths: The deepest layer of impunity

Caste and gender intersect to produce some of India’s most brutal crimes. Dalit women continue to face disproportionate sexual violence, often as retribution for asserting dignity or property rights. Cases from Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district (2023) and Madhya Pradesh’s Sidhi forest region (2024) illustrate patterns where rape is both punishment and warning.

Custodial deaths compound the pattern. Dalit men arrested on minor charges have died in custody under suspicious circumstances, their families alleging torture. Investigations are often perfunctory, medical reports delayed, and officers reinstated. Such cases demonstrate how state power fuses with social prejudice, converting constitutional guardians into instruments of caste discipline.

The intersection of caste and gender is absent from mainstream criminal jurisprudence. The law individualises crime; caste violence is collective. Without recognising this collective dimension, justice remains procedural rather than transformative.

Regional Patterns: The southern paradox

Contrary to common perception, official data and recent reportage show high incidence of atrocities in southern states—Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala—regions long celebrated for social reform. The Thoothukudi incident (2023) and the string of attacks in Tirunelveli district (over 1,000 cases in five years) reveal both persistence and visibility.

This “southern paradox” has sociological roots: assertive Dalit movements and higher reporting rates coexist with dominant-caste backlash. Greater literacy and media presence ensure documentation but not necessarily deterrence. The violence is thus both a measure of progress (assertion) and of resistance (repression).

The Post-2014 Inflection: Normalisation and silence

The last decade marks a qualitative shift. Three developments stand out:

1. Cultural majoritarianism: The language of “Sanatan Dharma” has become a political grammar through which caste is re-inscribed as divine order. Public discourse valorises hierarchy as heritage.
2. Digital propagation: Organised online ecosystems amplify caste-coded slurs and mobilise outrage with unprecedented speed.
3. Institutional silence: From police stations to ministries, selective inertia signals tacit endorsement. Silence becomes policy.

This triad—rhetoric, technology, and silence—has rendered caste violence socially negotiable. The constitutional ethos of equality competes with a cultural ethos of graded dignity.

The Constitutional Abyss: Implications for the Indian republic

1. The Failure of the SC/ST (PoA) Act: Legal protections as fiction

The rampant escalation of violence highlights the systemic failure of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (PoA Act). Designed as a potent legal shield, the Act is continually undermined by institutional resistance and poor enforcement, leading to low conviction rates.[5]

Police inaction is endemic; research documents the prevalent practice of police failing to register FIRs or prematurely closing cases through “Final Reports”. Despite the Supreme Court’s, clear directive that FIR registration is mandatory for cognizable offenses, police show a “differential stance” on enforcing the PoA Act compared to other statutes, demonstrating systemic bias in justice delivery.

Moreover, the state apparatus frequently operates as an agent of caste oppression. Incidents include police custody deaths of Dalit individuals, police brutality against a Dalit woman in Haryana, and officers being booked for assaulting a retired Dalit official. This pattern demonstrates that the constitutional mandate to protect Dalits is often betrayed by the very instruments of state power, rendering legal protections fictional.

The SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 and its 2015 Amendment remain India’s most potent instruments against caste violence, yet enforcement deficits persist. The act mandates immediate FIR registration, establishment of special courts, and protection of victims. Ground reports show chronic under-registration, downgrading of charges, and police bias.

Judicial interpretation oscillates between protection and dilution. The Supreme Court’s 2018 Subhash Kashinath Mahajan judgment introduced safeguards against “false cases,” effectively softening arrest provisions until partially reversed by Parliament. This episode revealed how institutional anxiety about misuse can overshadow concern for victims’ safety.

At stake is not merely criminal justice but constitutional morality—Ambedkar’s phrase for the ethical framework that must animate state action. When police or courts treat caste violence as routine, they erode that morality. The Republic then survives in form but not in substance.

2. The conceptual meaning of exclusion and humiliation

The pervasive violence is structurally maintained through exclusion, which is the combined outcome of deliberate deprivation and systemic discrimination, preventing Dalits from exercising full economic, social, and political rights.

Humiliation serves as a continuous psychological weapon, seeking to deny the basic humanity of the Dalit individual and enforce ritual hierarchy. Whether through being stripped and beaten, forced into humiliating acts, or subjected to taunts questioning their merit, the goal remains the denial of constitutional dignity. Dr. Ambedkar’s formulation established that democracy requires the foundational principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The evidence suggests that when Dalits attempt to live a democratic life—by asserting social equality (riding a horse), achieving academic merit (joining an elite institution), or claiming high constitutional office (CJI)—they are met with structural violence and, frequently, death. This structural opposition confirms that the traditional social order fundamentally rejects the core ethical commitments of the Indian Constitutional Republic.

Conclusion: Safeguarding constitutional morality

Philosophers from Avishai Margalit to Axel Honneth define humiliation as the denial of recognition essential to personhood. Caste violence operates precisely through such denial. Its power lies not only in inflicting pain but in publicly authorising inequality. When a Dalit child is beaten for entering a temple, or when a Chief Justice is abused online, the message is continuous: certain bodies remain conditional citizens. Humiliation thus functions as pedagogy—teaching both victim and perpetrator the limits of equality. To counter it requires more than punishment; it requires re-socialisation—a transformation of cultural consciousness that law alone cannot produce.

The investigation into the hierarchy of attacks against Dalits, tracing the violence from ritual control in the village to ideological confrontation at the highest constitutional levels, confirms a severe crisis of constitutional morality in India. The nature of caste warfare has transitioned from covert rural brutality to overt, high-profile ideological confrontations in the urban and judicial spheres. This escalation is profoundly enabled by a political climate that prioritises majoritarian traditionalism over the egalitarian principles of the Constitution. The targeting of a Dalit Chief Justice, sanctioned by ideological rhetoric and met with institutional leniency, signifies that the foundational democratic tenet of equality is now under explicit, active threat.

To address this existential challenge, a set of structural and policy reforms is necessary to transform nominal guarantees into substantive equality:

1. Mandatory and independent police accountability: Legislation must be introduced to mandate the immediate and unconditional registration of FIRs under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act for all cognizable offenses, coupled with the establishment of independent police accountability commissions with the authority to prosecute officers who violate or fail to enforce the Act.
2. Criminalising institutional caste bias: Stringent anti-discrimination laws, backed by criminal penalties, must be implemented across all educational, corporate, and governmental institutions to address structural and psychological harassment, ending the systemic institutional denial of caste discrimination.
3. Digital accountability for incitement: Robust legal and regulatory measures are necessary to hold social media platforms accountable for the unchecked proliferation of caste-based hate speech and the incitement of violence, recognising it as a direct threat to public order and democratic principles.

The escalation of caste violence against Dalits—from the exclusion of a child from water access to the political assault on the Chief Justice—is a gauge of the Republic’s health. If the judiciary cannot be protected from attacks based on the caste identity of its leader, the entire legal and democratic framework built to secure social justice stands compromised.

More than seventy-five years after independence, the Indian Republic stands at a moral crossroads. Formally, it is a constitutional democracy; substantively, it remains stratified by caste. The incidents chronicled in 2025 itsef—stretching from rural Madhya Pradesh to the Supreme Court’s digital corridors—suggest not an aberration but a continuum.

The question is therefore not whether caste survives, but how the state and society have adapted to its survival. The new architecture of attacks—spanning villages, cities, institutions, and cyberspace—reveals that violence and exclusion now coexist comfortably with democratic form.

Ambedkar warned that “Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic.” The task ahead is to deepen the soil—to cultivate a culture where dignity is not negotiable, where equality is not episodic, and where the law’s promise finally becomes social reality. Until then, every assault on a Dalit body, image, or word remains an assault on the Constitution itself.

References

Indian colleges are hotbeds of casteism. How can they do better? – The News Minute https://www.thenewsminute.com/news/indian-colleges-are-hotbeds-casteism-how-can-they-do-better-176683

Caste and the Dalits: An Introduction – Global Ministries https://www.globalministries.org/resource/caste-and-the-dalits-an-introduction/

A clash of ideologies: Why Ambedkar and Hindutva are poles apart – The Polity https://thepolity.co.in/article/173

Hate Speech against Dalits on Social Media – Brandeis Library Open Access Journals https://journals.library.brandeis.edu/index.php/caste/article/download/260/61/1048

View of Hate Speech against Dalits on Social Media: Would a Penny Sparrow be Prosecuted in India for Online Hate Speech? https://journals.library.brandeis.edu/index.php/caste/article/view/260/61

Caste-hate speech – International Dalit Solidarity Network
https://idsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Caste-hate-speech-report-IDSN-2021.pdf

Atrocities on Dalits in Contemporary India Even After 75 Years of Indian Independence https://ijfans.org/uploads/paper/5af7bf7ae1851636fe726333533b1c8b.pdf

Dalit scholar’s protest exposes casteism in India’s higher education – FairPlanet https://www.fairplanet.org/story/dalit-scholars-protest-exposes-casteism-in-indias-higher-education/

IIT-Bombay Dalit student death | Senior says Darshan Solanki felt alienated by roommate, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/iit-bombay-dalit-student-death-senior-says-darshan-solanki-felt-alienated-by-roommate/article66611752.ece

Attack on CJI: Union MoS Athawale seeks SC/ST Act charges as BJP does a tightrope walk https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/shoe-attack-cji-mos-athawale-sc-st-act-bjp-10298249/

Ram Mandir Invitation: NCP Leader Raises Concerns about Draupadi Murmu’s Exclusion,

https://www.epw.in/engage/article/rohith-vemula-foregrounding-caste-oppression#:~:text=Between%202016%20and%202021%20itself,death%20sparked%20a%20political%20movement.

Rohith Vemula: Foregrounding Caste Oppression in Indian Higher Education Institutions, https://www.epw.in/engage/article/rohith-vemula-foregrounding-caste-oppression

IIT Student Suicides: Curse Of Caste On Campus? | Left, Right & Centre – YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhDhIhQiRWQ

How many lives will it take before India acknowledges dominant caste hegemony in educational institutes? – Citizens for Justice and Peace
https://cjp.org.in/how-many-lives-will-it-take-before-india-acknowledges-dominant-caste-hegemony-in-educational-institutes/

India’s caste system: ‘They are trying to erase dalit history. This is a martyrdom, a sacrifice’ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/24/student-suicide-untouchables-stuggle-for-justice-india

Suicide by Dalit students in 4 years – The Hindu https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Madurai/suicide-by-dalit-students-in-4-years/article2425965.ece

Unveiling The Tragic Link: Caste Discrimination And Suicides In Higher Education https://theprobe.in/stories/unveiling-the-tragic-link-caste-discrimination-and-suicides-in-higher-education/

Urban Labour Market Discrimination – GSDRC
https://gsdrc.org/document-library/urban-labour-market-discrimination/

Indian women, Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims face discrimination in earnings and jobs: Oxfam report https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2022/Sep/15/indian-women-dalits-adivasis-muslims-face-discrimination-in-earnings-and-jobs-oxfam-report-2498476.html

An Introduction to Right-Wing Extremism in India – ScholarWorks at UMass Boston, https://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1809&context=nejpp

For far-right groups in India, Instagram has become a place to promote violence, report shows – PBS
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/for-far-right-groups-in-india-instagram-has-become-a-place-to-promote-violence-report-shows

Online caste-hate speech: Pervasive discrimination and humiliation on social media, https://teaching.globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/resources/online-caste-hate-speech-pervasive-discrimination-and-humiliation-social-media

Udayanidhi Stalin’s Critique of Sanatana Dharma – Two Articles – Janata Weekly
https://janataweekly.org/udayanidhi-stalins-critique-of-sanatana-dharma-two-articles/

The Eternal Discrimination Of Sanatana Dharma – Madras Courier, https://madrascourier.com/opinion/the-eternal-discrimination-of-sanatana-dharma/

Dr.Ambedkar, Sanatan Dharma and Dalit Politics – Countercurrents, https://countercurrents.org/2023/09/dr-ambedkar-sanatan-dharma-and-dalit-politics/

(PDF) The attack on the CJI and the shadow of caste – ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/publication/396310357_The_attack_on_the_CJI_and_the_shadow_of_caste

Right-wing influencer Ajeet Bharti faces scrutiny online after ‘shoe attack’ on CJI Gavai, https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/after-shoe-attack-on-cji-right-wing-youtuber-ajeet-bharti-faces-scrutiny-online-101759830247046.html

RSS and Ambedkar: A Camaraderie That Never Existed – Janata Weekly, https://janataweekly.org/rss-and-ambedkar-a-camaraderie-that-never-existed/

From criticism to praise: How RSS changed stance on Ambedkar – Deccan Herald, https://www.deccanherald.com/india/from-criticism-to-praise-how-rss-changed-stance-on-ambedkar-3492843

Appropriating Ambedkar: Effort to merge Left and Ambedkarite politics – The Hindu, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/appropriating-ambedkar-effort-to-merge-left-and-ambedkarite-politics/article8500076.ece

RSS At 100 And The Philosophy Of A Nation’s Unmaking – OpEd – Eurasia Review, https://www.eurasiareview.com/08102025-rss-at-100-and-the-philosophy-of-a-nations-unmaking-oped/

Who Is Ajeet Bharti? YouTuber Questioned After Controversial Comments On CJI Shoe Attack https://zeenews.india.com/india/who-is-ajeet-bharti-youtuber-questioned-after-controversial-comments-on-cji-shoe-attack-2969348.html

Why did Noida Police question Ajeet Bharti? What he commented on CJI BR Gavai after ‘shoe attack’ | Latest News India – Hindustan Times
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/why-did-noida-police-question-ajeet-bharti-what-he-commented-on-cji-br-gavai-after-shoe-attack-101759894807122.html

Prof Abhay Dubey on Ajit Bharti Arrested for Inciting Violence Against CJI Gavai after Shoes Hurled – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqpJ8s7HZhk

YouTuber Ajeet Bharti Taken in for Questioning After Remarks on CJI Shoe Incident, Released Later – LawBeat
https://lawbeat.in/news-updates/youtuber-ajeet-bharti-taken-in-for-questioning-after-remarks-on-cji-shoe-incident-released-later-1533340

‘Final Reports’ under Sec-498A and the SC/ST Atrocities Act | Economic and Political Weekly, https://www.epw.in/journal/2014/41/commentary/final-reports-under-sec-498a-and-scst-atrocities-act.html

Dalits and Social Exclusion: An Overview – International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
https://www.ijsr.net/archive/v8i7/ART20199584.pdf

India Exclusion Report 2013-2014 – Selected caste extracts
https://idsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/India-Exclusion-Report-2013-Selected-caste-extracts.pdf

The Death of a Dalit in a Democracy – Caste – The India Forum, https://www.theindiaforum.in/caste/death-dalit-democracy

[1] This body of work is also a major source for stories and protest songs (Qawwali) that focus on anti-caste movements and give voice to Dalit struggles wherein the broom and pot would be consistent imagery for this protest tradition.

[2] https://www.hrw.org/reports/2007/india0207/6.htm; https://frontline.thehindu.com/social-issues/article30193600.ece#:~:text=IN%20one%20of%20the%20most,presence%20of%20scores%20of%20onlookers.

[3] https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/we-all-failed-rohith/

[4] https://cjp.org.in/iit-mumbai-report-on-darshan-solanki-death-crucial-evidence-overlooked/

[5] https://sabrang.com/cc/archive/2005/mar05/cover.html

The post The Anatomy of Humiliation: Defining caste violence in the Constitutional era appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The report, titled “Excluded, Targeted, & Displaced: Communal Narratives and Violence in Uttarakhand,” is based on field investigations, victim testimonies, police records, court documents, official notices, and media reports. It records incidents from districts including Uttarkashi, Tehri, Chamoli, Nainital, Dehradun, Haridwar, and Haldwani, and examines how criminal allegations, administrative actions, religious mobilisation, and government policies intersected with communal narratives on the ground.

According to APCR, the report traces how these incidents unfolded over time, the nature of violence and displacement experienced by affected families, and the responses of the police and state authorities in each case.

Details of the Report: A pattern takes shape

According to APCR, communal violence in Uttarakhand cannot be understood as a series of isolated incidents. From 2021 onwards, Muslims across districts have faced targeted violence, economic boycotts, evictions, intimidation, and attacks on religious spaces, often following rumours, allegations, or political mobilisation by Hindutva groups. These incidents occurred across Uttarkashi, Tehri, Chamoli, Nainital, Dehradun, Haridwar, and surrounding regions, affecting shopkeepers, migrant workers, religious institutions, and long-settled families—many of whom had lived in Uttarakhand for decades.

The report notes that many affected Muslim families trace their migration to Najibabad, Uttar Pradesh, dating back to the 1970s and 1980s, well before Uttarakhand became a separate state in 2000. Despite this, they are repeatedly branded as “outsiders.”

The Haridwar Dharm Sansad, 2021: APCR identifies the December 2021 Haridwar Dharm Sansad as a critical flashpoint. At this three-day conclave, multiple Hindutva religious leaders delivered speeches calling for violence against Muslims, the establishment of a Hindutva rashtra, and the suppression of Islam and Christianity. Speakers named in the report include Yati Narasinghanand, Prabodhanand Giri, Yatindranand Giri, Sadhvi Annapurna, Swami Anand Swaroop, and Kalicharan Maharaj.

Police complaints were filed following public outrage, but the report notes that the event contributed to the normalisation of openly violent anti-Muslim rhetoric in the state.

Administrative drives and communal framing: In 2023, the Uttarakhand government initiated a statewide drive to identify and remove “illegal structures” on government land. Right-wing groups framed this as action against “land jihad” and “mazar jihad.” By May 2024, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami claimed that 5,000 acres had been recovered.

APCR records that mosques and mazars were disproportionately targeted, while comparable scrutiny was not applied to religious structures of other communities. This framing, the report states, created public legitimacy for demolitions and heightened communal tensions.

Purola, 2023- allegations and aftermath: In Purola, Uttarkashi district, a case alleging the kidnapping of a minor Hindu girl by Ubaid Khan and Jitendra Saini triggered widespread unrest. In court, the girl later stated that she had not been abducted and that the police had coerced her statement. Despite the acquittal, right-wing protests escalated.

Muslim families were forced to flee or sell properties. A Hindutva Maha Panchayat was organised, prompting intervention by the Uttarakhand High Court, which reminded the state of its duty to maintain law and order. Following the incident, the Chief Minister announced background verification measures, stating that people would be able to live in Uttarakhand only after verification.

Uttarkashi, 2024- mosque targeting and mob violence: On October 24, 2024, a rally led by Swami Darshan Bharti demanded demolition of the Uttarkashi mosque. The rally turned violent: five police personnel and over 30 civilians were injured, and Muslim shops were vandalised and looted.

Despite assurances to the High Court, a Hindutva Mahapanchayat was allowed on 1 December 2024, where speakers—including BJP MLA T Raja—issued threats involving bulldozers. APCR records that this directly violated the spirit of the High Court’s directions.

Testimonies document shopkeepers suffering losses of ₹50,000 to ₹1 lakh, broken shutters, looted goods, and lasting fear.

Tehri region- Srinagar, Chauras, Kirti Nagar: In Srinagar, Muslims reported being pushed out from Kirti Nagar and Chauras, following “love jihad” allegations. At least 15 shopkeepers were evicted and forced to return to Najibabad.

APCR records how communal narratives entered schools, with teachers recounting speeches about “love jihad” and “land jihad” at official functions. Muslim government employees reported being labelled outsiders and accused of occupying land or jobs.

In Chauras, after allegations about a relationship between a Hindu woman and a Muslim man, at least five Muslim shopkeepers fled, despite no complaint from the woman’s family.

Gauchar, Chamoli- Escalation from a minor dispute: On October 15, 2024, a parking dispute between two men—one Hindu, one Muslim—escalated into communal mobilisation. Right-wing groups intervened, leading to the eviction of at least 10 Muslim shopkeepers.

Families who had lived in Gauchar for 45 years fled overnight. APCR documents mob intimidation at hospitals, vandalism of shops, and police-escorted evacuations.

Nanda Ghat- Forced overnight displacement: Nanda Ghat witnessed one of the most severe incidents. Following an eve-teasing allegation against a Muslim barber, a sequence of protests culminated in large-scale vandalism on September 2–3, 2024. Shops were looted, ₹4 lakh in cash stolen, vehicles thrown into rivers, and a makeshift mosque destroyed.

Police advised Muslims to leave for their own safety. Thirty to thirty-five people were escorted out in police vehicles, effectively evacuating the community. Despite High Court directions later ensuring protection, most families did not return.

Nainital, 2024- Violence following a criminal allegation: In April 2024, after the arrest of Mohammad Usman under POCSO and BNS provisions, protests turned violent. APCR documents stone-pelting, vandalism of Muslim shops, attacks on eateries, and an assault on Nainital Jama Masjid, which is located next to the police station.

Despite repeated requests, additional forces were not deployed for hours. No FIR was registered for damage to the mosque, even after multiple hearings.

Expansion to Haldwani: Following Nainital, right-wing groups moved into Haldwani, pressuring Muslim shopkeepers to change names or shut businesses. Long-standing establishments reported threats after their religious identity became known.

Legislative changes and institutional targeting: APCR documents the passage of the Uniform Civil Code (2024) and subsequent 2025 amendments, along with changes to anti-conversion laws and minority education governance. These laws increased penalties, expanded definitions of unlawful conversion, and altered the structure of madrasa regulation, raising concerns among Muslim communities about loss of autonomy.

The UMMEED portal and demolitions: The report records that the UMMEED portal digitisation drive required all waqf properties to register within a short deadline. Due to technical failures and documentation requirements, 75% of waqf properties remained unregistered. These were automatically classified as “disputed.”

Between June and November 2025, APCR records the demolition of over 300 Muslim shrines and dargahs, including registered properties such as Hazrat Kamal Shah Dargah in Dehradun. The Supreme Court later issued contempt notices in some cases.

Conclusion drawn by the report

The APCR fact-finding report concludes that the incidents documented across Uttarakhand between 2021 and 2025 cannot be viewed in isolation. Based on field investigations and verified records, the report finds that Muslim individuals and families were repeatedly subjected to violence, threats, vandalism, economic exclusion, evictions, and displacement following communal mobilisation, allegations, or administrative action.

The report records that in several locations, police protection was either delayed or inadequate, FIRs relating to attacks on Muslim property and religious places were not consistently registered, and affected families were advised to leave areas “for their own safety.” Many of those who fled had lived in these towns for decades and were forced to abandon homes, shops, and livelihoods without any formal rehabilitation or assurance of return.

APCR further notes that administrative measures—such as demolition drives, verification exercises, and regulatory actions—often coincided with periods of heightened communal tension, deepening insecurity among minority communities. Taken together, the report documents a sustained impact on the safety, dignity, and ability of Muslims in Uttarakhand to live and work without fear, and places these findings on record for judicial, institutional, and public scrutiny.

The report may be read below:

Related:

Bihar under BJP: Hate attacks against Muslims spiral, one dies

India’s Silent Push-Out: Courts, states, and the deportation of Bengali-Speaking Muslims

Weaponising Sufism and Wahhabism to Subjugate Muslims

Delhi Court sentences riots accused for promoting hatred against Muslims, sentences him to 3 years in custody

The post From Purola to Nainital: APCR report details pattern of communal violence in Uttarakhand appeared first on SabrangIndia.

According to a notification uploaded on the board’s website, the 50 supernumerary seats shall be distributed strictly based on the NEET-UG merit of the candidates concerned and their preferences among the seven newly established government medical colleges. The U-turn came after weeks of national outrage when the board had r said it cannot conduct fresh counselling for MBBS admissions and that the allocation of supernumerary seats to those who were admitted to the SMVDIME should be decided at the government level.

This sudden clarification came in a letter to the Union Territory’s health and medical education department, which sought its intervention in the relocation of students of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME).

Now, the Jammu and Kashmir Board of Professional Entrance Examination (BOPEE) said it will  conduct fresh counselling for the 2025-26 session for the medical students of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME). Students have now been called for their counselling tomorrow, Saturday January 24 reports The Hindistan Times and Indian Express. This is for allotment of colleges across the Valley and Jammu.

The students, it is reported, would now be adjusted in seven government medical colleges of the union territory – three in the Kashmir valley and four in the  province of Jammu. While 22 seats are available spread across Kashmir colleges, 28 students will be adjusted in Jammu.

The National Medical Commission (NMC) had earlier this month withdrawn the permission it had earlier granted to SMVDIME to conduct an MBBS course in the current academic year. This has left 50 MBBS students who joined the institute without a college. Ironically, the NMC had cited deficiencies in college infrastructure and operations; however, the much criticised decision had come in the wake of far right-wing groups protesting against the course’s demography – of the 50 students, 44 were Muslim, and most were from Kashmir.

“That the Board shall conduct the physical round of counselling to accommodate MBBS students of SMVDIME Katra to the Govt. Medical Colleges within the UT of J&K against the supernumerary seats so created,” the BOPEE has now said in a fresh notification.

The notification said that the Health and Medical Education department has conveyed the seat matrix of the 50 supernumerary seats. As per the matrix, seven additional seats each have been allotted in four government medical colleges in Jammu province – GMC Udhampur, GMC Kathua, GMC Rajouri and GMC Doda – while seven additional seats each have been allotted in GMC Baramulla and GMC Handwara. Eight have been allotted in GMC Anantnag. Incidentally, the seven government medical colleges that have been allotted the supernumerary seats have been set up only in the past seven years. The government has not allotted any supernumerary seats in premier institutes like GMC Srinagar, GMC Jammu or the SKIMS Medical College.

Previously, in a communication to the J-K’s Health and Medical Education department dated January 21, BOPEE had said it cannot conduct fresh counselling for the 2025-26 session, and asked the J-K government to admit students to supernumerary seats in other medical colleges “at its own level”. “The creation and allotment of supernumerary seats doesn’t fall within the ambit of BOPEE,” the communication said. The change of stand came within hours. In fact, both communications are dated January 21.

Related:

Partitioned minds, a Saffron Fatwa & Denial of Fair Opportunity: Mata Vaishno Devi University, Jammu

The post Flip and then a Flop: 50 students of the Vaishno Devi MBBS institute will now be admitted to 7 medical colleges in Jammu, Kashmir appeared first on SabrangIndia.

According to police officials, the bodies of the couple were buried behind a temple on the outskirts of the village and were recovered following the confession of the accused. As reported by The Quint, the main accused have been identified as Rinku Saini and Satish Saini, Kajal’s brothers, while a third brother has also been named in the FIR. Two of the accused have been arrested so far.

Arman, aged 27, had reportedly been working in Saudi Arabia and had returned to India a few months ago, during which time he was residing in Moradabad. It was during this period that he met Kajal Saini, 22, and the two entered into a romantic relationship. However, Kajal’s brothers were strongly opposed to the interfaith relationship and had allegedly pressured her to end it, as reported by NDTV.

Approximately three days before the recovery of the bodies, both Arman and Kajal went missing. Arman’s father, Haneef, subsequently lodged a missing persons complaint at Pakwara Police Station. During the investigation, police discovered that Kajal was also untraceable, raising further suspicion.

Upon questioning Kajal’s brothers, police say they confessed to murdering the couple. Based on their disclosure, the accused led investigators to the burial site. The bodies were exhumed in the presence of a magistrate and sent for post-mortem examination, following due legal procedure.

Shockingly, the accused told investigators that they had tied the hands and legs of both victims before hacking them to death, an account that has intensified concerns around premeditated violence driven by notions of family “honour,” as reported by NDTV.

Confirming the developments, Satpal Antil, Senior Superintendent of Police, Moradabad, stated:

“During the investigation, it was found that the woman’s brothers murdered both individuals. After they confessed, the bodies were recovered at their instance. The spade used in the crime has also been seized.”

थाना पाकबड़ा क्षेत्रान्तर्गत ग्राम उमरी में एक युवक व युवती की हत्या के प्रकरण में थाना पाकबड़ा पर सुसंगत धाराओं में अभियोग पंजीकृत किया गया है। पुलिस द्वारा त्वरित कार्यवाही करते हुए 02 आरोपी भाईयो को हिरासत में लिया जा चुका है प्रकरण में अन्य आवश्यक विधिक कार्यवाही प्रचलित है। pic.twitter.com/3KVkT2Vp4b

— MORADABAD POLICE (@moradabadpolice) January 21, 2026

Police have registered a case at Pakwara Police Station under Crime Number 18/26, invoking Sections 103(1) and 238 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), based on a complaint filed by Arman’s family. The incident has sparked outrage and renewed concerns over honour-based violence, particularly targeting interfaith relationships, in Uttar Pradesh and beyond. Further investigation is underway, and police have stated that action will be taken against all those found involved in the crime.

Related:

Street Pressure, State Power, and the Criminalisation of Choice: How Hindutva groups are pushing Maharashtra’s anti-conversion law

Allahabad HC: Quashes FIR under draconian UP ‘Anti-Conversion Act’, warns state authorities against lodging ‘Mimeographic Style’ FIRs

Allahabad HC slams overzealous police action, says distributing Bibles or preaching Christianity is not an offence under UP conversion law

A New Silence: The Supreme Court’s turn toward non-interference in hate-speech cases

The post Interfaith couple tied, hacked to death in Moradabad; woman’s brothers arrested in alleged honour killing appeared first on SabrangIndia.

By a remarkable coincidence, the Muslim woman’s blood group matched the Hindu man, and the Hindu woman’s blood group matched the Muslim man. Understanding the situation, both women made a thoughtful and humane decision and agreed to exchange donors, giving both men a new lease on life.

At a time when when hatred-driven politics and people spreading religious animosity push others to turn against one another, this scene offers a much-needed sense of hope and reassurance.

Thanks Sakal newspaper for this story of Everyday Harmony (: हिंदूची किडनी मुस्लिमाच्या; तर मुस्लिमाची किडनी हिंदूच्या शरीरात; तुम्हीच सांगा, या किडनीचा धर्म कोणता?)

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: Closed doors of the operation theatre. Outside, the anxious heartbeats of relatives. There was neither religion nor caste here—only the will to live. Driven solely by love for their dear ones, a Hindu woman’s kidney was transplanted into a Muslim man, and a Muslim woman’s kidney into a Hindu man. This surgery was carried out at Care Sigma Hospital.

In the city, campaigning for the municipal corporation elections has come to an end. In some wards, the election turned into a Hindu–Muslim issue instead of focusing on development and civic concerns. While all this coloured the public sphere, elsewhere a Hindu woman donated her kidney to a Muslim man, and a Muslim woman donated her kidney to a Hindu man, saving their lives.

The surgery was performed at the Care Sigma Hospital. The kidneys of two men—one Hindu and one Muslim—had failed. They were undergoing treatment, but there was no option other than a kidney transplant. Not wanting to lose their life partners, with whom they had shared a lifetime of summers and monsoons and stood together through joy and sorrow, both wives agreed to donate their kidneys.

However, a problem arose because the blood groups did not match, so neither woman could donate a kidney to her own husband. As a result, both were left helpless. Meanwhile, the Muslim woman’s blood group matched the Hindu patient, and the Hindu woman’s blood group matched the Muslim patient—because blood is neither saffron nor green; it is simply blood.

Senior nephrologists at the hospital, Dr. Pradeep Saruk and Dr. Shrikant Deshmukh, counseled both families. After that, the women decided to donate their kidneys to each other’s husbands. As a result, not only were two lives saved, but a new bond of blood was formed beyond the walls of religion.

During this entire process, valuable support was provided by anesthetist Dr. Pramod Apsingekar and his colleagues, transplant coordinator Vishal Narwade, OT technicians, and other staff members. For this, the hospital’s Managing Director Dr. Unmesh Takalkar, Director Dr. Manisha Takalkar, and Chief Operating Officer Sameer Pawar congratulated the entire team.

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Protesters are mostly from the tribal communities of Palghar district. They had started their trek towards the collectorate, demanding better implementation of land rights, reinstatement of the MGNREGA, cancellation of the Vadhavan port and availability of water for drinking and irrigation purposes, among others. Accompanied by protest songs on microphones, striding purposefully with CPI-M flags and banners, chanting slogans, protesters reached the Collectorate office of Palghar on the evening of January 20, where they plan to camp until their demands are met – the most longstanding of which is the enforcement of land rights. Adivasis have been tilling forest and grazing land for centuries but still don’t own the plots they cultivate.

The Forest Rights Act, 2006, vests forest land and resource rights in Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers who have resided in such areas for generations. Gram sabhas initiate claims, verified through sub-divisional and district committees, protecting dwellers from eviction until their rights are settled. But most of the tribal farmers at the rally have not had their claims approved. The last time that farmers marched in their thousands was from Nashik to Azad Maidan in Mumbai, a stretch of 180 kilometres with several marchers barefoot.

Mass organisations All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) and Student’s Federation of India (SFI) and Adivasi Adhikar Rashtriya Manch (AARM) have also joined this March in huge numbers. Beginning the long walk on January 19, the marchers have reached the Palghar Collectorate where they were denied permission for the dharna inside the Collectorate. Undettered they have begun the indefinite protests outside.

Citizens for Justice and Peace has long analysed national and international law on Farmers Rights. Some of these may be read here and here.

The March is being led by CPI (M) Polit Bureau member and AIKS National President Dr Ashok Dhawale, Polit Bureau member and AIDWA National General Secretary Mariam Dhawale, Central Committee member, state secretary and AIKS National Joint Secretary Dr Ajit Nawale, Central Committee member and CITU State Secretary Vinod Nikole, two-term MLA from Dahanu, State Secretariat member and AARM State Convenor Kiran Gahala, and many others. Later CPI (M) Polit Bureau member and AIKS National General Secretary Vijoo Krishnan also joined the March.

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According to Palghar Police officials, as reported in The Hindu, around 30,000 protesters joined the long march. The demands include full implementation of the Forest Rights Act, the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act PESA, revival of the Jal Jeevan Mission scheme to provide work, cancellation of the smart meter scheme, appointment to all the vacant posts in the government service of Palghar district, providing the benefits of the Gharkul scheme, and cancellation of the development of Vadhavan and Murbe ports.

CPI (M)’s women wing State secretary Prachi Hatiwlekar told the newspaper, “This struggle is age-old, starting from bonded labour to now working for long pending issue of land ownership transfer. Central government is only trying to dilute the Forest Rights Act.”

The protesters are also articulate and vocal against the smart metres, media reports indicate. They want that the government reinstall old meters and instruct their officials not to impose smart meters. Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) rolled out the smart meters in 2021, which automatically record real-time power consumption and send the data to the electricity distribution company. However, the device has been criticised for bill hike, no consent for installation, and poor awareness about tariff changes.

Read this story on smart metres here

The protest shows discontent among tribal communities over land ownership, large infrastructure projects in the district and changes to MGNREGA. All the protesters unanimously reiterated that unless and until “we don’t get all our papers stamped, we won’t go home”.

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Kisan Long March ends with Fresh Promises to Farmers

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The attack on Pastor Bipin Bihari Naik, which took place on January 4, 2026 in Parjang village, involved acts of violence so extreme that they amount to public torture and religious coercion—including forced consumption of cow dung, public parading with a garland of slippers, and attempts to compel religious slogans. Despite the public uproar, the case has seen little progress, with the alleged perpetrators remaining at large and the victim facing a counter-FIR instead.

As the delay continues, anxiety has spread beyond the pastor’s family to the wider Christian community in the region, several of whom have reportedly gone into hiding. What has unfolded in Parjang is no longer being viewed as an isolated incident, but as part of a growing pattern of communal violence, administrative apathy, and criminalisation of religious practice, increasingly reported across Odisha.

Pastor chooses forgiveness on Graham Staines’ martyrdom anniversary

On the anniversary of the martyrdom of Australian missionary Graham Staines, who was burnt alive along with his two young sons in Odisha in 1999, Pastor Naik publicly chose the path of forgiveness over retribution.

Speaking to Catholic Connect, the pastor said he had forgiven not only those who assaulted and humiliated him, but also those who falsely accused him of forced religious conversion.

“On the anniversary of the martyrdom of Graham Staines, I choose forgiveness. I forgive those who assaulted me and those who falsely accused me. Our God forgives us unconditionally, and He teaches us to forgive. In that spirit, I forgive them and place everything in God’s hands,” he said.

However, Pastor Naik emphasised that forgiveness did not mean surrendering constitutional rights. His sole appeal to the authorities, he said, was for peace, safety, and freedom of religion.

“I have only one humble request: that my family, I, and all the Christian faithful be allowed to live peacefully and freely strengthen our faith in the God we have chosen to follow. This is what I clearly conveyed to the Superintendent of Police when I met him in Dhenkanal on 13 January.”

He also expressed gratitude to individuals and organisations across Odisha and beyond who stood by him during what he described as one of the darkest moments of his life, acknowledging the prayers, solidarity, and moral support he received.

Elder Brother: “Justice has still not been delivered”

Echoing the pastor’s anguish, his elder brother Udaya Naik spoke to Catholic Connect about the family’s ordeal since the attack, stating bluntly that justice has not been delivered even after fifteen days.

“Instead of justice, our family is living in constant pain, disturbance, and a complete loss of peace,” he said.

According to Udaya, when the local police failed to act, the family mobilised support from the Christian community and personally approached senior authorities.

“When no action was taken by the local police, I gathered around forty-five faithful members and went to the office of the Superintendent of Police to submit a complaint. We spent nearly eight to ten thousand rupees hiring a vehicle to reach there, hoping our voices would be heard.”

Despite these efforts, he said, no concrete steps were taken.

“This prolonged inaction has shaken my faith in the Constitution and the justice system—especially for innocent people like us.”

Allegations of police negligence and delayed response

Udaya Naik alleged that the assault was premeditated and could have been prevented had the police acted promptly.

“Had the police responded immediately, my brother could have been rescued,” he said. During the assault, family members repeatedly contacted the police helpline, while Pastor Naik’s wife, Vandana, rushed to the nearest police station. Instead of intervening immediately, the police allegedly demanded an FIR and proof while the violence was still ongoing.

Pastor Naik was allegedly dragged through village streets, beaten, paraded in slippers, and publicly humiliated. “Are there no CCTV cameras on those roads?” Udaya asked, adding that photographs showing the public parade were dismissed by the police as insufficient evidence.

The family claims they were repeatedly asked for medical proof, even as the pastor bore visible injuries—an approach they described as deeply insensitive and negligent.

What happened in Parjang village

According to Telegraph, Pastor Naik had travelled to Parjang village—a Hindu-majority village with only seven Christian families—to attend a routine prayer meeting with his wife, children, and other believers.

The gathering was disrupted when a mob of around 40 people, allegedly including members of the Bajrang Dal, forcibly entered the house.

“They started beating everyone inside,” Vandana told Maktoob. “Besides us, there were seven families praying. My children and I managed to escape through a narrow alley and ran to the police station.”

While Vandana sought help, Pastor Naik was seised by the mob. He was beaten with sticks, slapped repeatedly, smeared with red sindoor, garlanded with slippers, and paraded through the village as a spectacle.

He was later tied to a Hanuman temple, his hands bound behind a rod, and was forced to consume cow dung while being beaten and coerced into chanting “Jai Shri Ram”. Vandana stated that despite her repeated pleas, police reached the village nearly two hours later.

Even after police intervention, the mob reportedly did not immediately disperse.

Police conduct after the rescue

A social activist told Maktoob Media that after being rescued, Pastor Naik was made to sit at the police station for nearly an hour without medical assistance, despite bleeding and being visibly traumatised.

Police eventually registered a complaint regarding the assault. However, they also filed a counter FIR against Pastor Naik, accusing him of forced religious conversion—an allegation for which no evidence has been produced.

Such counter-cases, activists note, have increasingly become a tool to dilute accountability in communal violence cases involving Christians.

Christian families forced into hiding

Following the attack, the situation in Parjang deteriorated further. Vandana told Maktoob Media that all seven Christian families in the village have gone into hiding due to threats, social boycott, and fear of further violence.

“They are staying with relatives in different places. The villagers have threatened them and cut off all support,” she said.

Pastor Naik’s own family is currently staying in a safe house, unsure when—or if—they can safely return home.

A pattern of communal violence in Odisha

The Parjang assault forms part of a broader pattern of communal violence in Odisha. In recent weeks alone, a Muslim man was lynched by gau rakshaks for transporting cattle, while another Muslim youth in Mayurbhanj district was paraded naked and forced to chant religious slogans.

In Malkangiri district, Protestant Christians were attacked while returning from church in Kotamateru village, leaving eight injured. Christian leaders again pointed to Bajrang Dal members, while police initially attempted to downplay the violence as a “family dispute.”

Earlier this month, a 29-year-old nun was forcibly removed from a train by Bajrang Dal activists and detained for 18 hours on false allegations of trafficking and conversion.

Forgiveness without forgetting

Despite the trauma, Pastor Naik and his family say they are choosing peace over confrontation, drawing inspiration from Gladys Staines, the widow of Graham Staines, who publicly forgave her husband’s killers.

“We now choose the path of forgiveness,” Udaya Naik said. “But if the police initiate an inquiry on their own and punish the perpetrators, we would welcome it wholeheartedly.”

For now, the family says it no longer has the strength to continue pursuing justice through repeated appeals.

“This entire episode is a deeply painful reflection on the present state of our country and its people,” Udaya said.

As the perpetrators remain free and fear grips minority communities, the silence of the justice system continues to speak louder than any slogan—raising urgent questions about accountability, constitutional protections, and the rule of law in contemporary India.

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MP, Odisha, Delhi, Rajasthan: Right-wing outfits barge into 2 churches ahead of Christmas, attack vendors selling X’mas goodies, tensions run high

Institutional Murder in Odisha: A Student sets herself on fire to be heard

Bengali Migrant Workers Detained in Odisha: Calcutta High Court demands answers, seeks coordination between states

The post Publicly Tortured, Forced to Eat Cow Dung: No arrests in Odisha Pastor assault case appeared first on SabrangIndia.

While police remain uncertain whether the violence stemmed from a puja subscription dispute or a traffic altercation, political parties have come forward with their conflicting versions of events.

Speaking to The Wire on Tuesday, January 14, Unakoti Superintendent of Police Avinash Rai mentioned that multiple narratives have emerged on what started the violence.

“There are many account. One group is saying the conflict started from a fundraising drive. Another group says it started from a heated conversation between an e-rickshaw driver and a bike rider. There is also another version – that a local truck driver struck a bike,” Rai stated.

Rai said police are investigating the case. “But it is clear that there was a verbal altercation between people of two communities, which turned into communal violence. As soon as we learned about it, we immediately went there and controlled the situation within half an hour,” he added.

On Friday, January 16, Kumarghat Sub-divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Utpalendu Debnath told The Wire that 13 individuals have been arrested and are now under judicial custody. Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita was withdrawn on the same day.

Addressing the extent of damage, Debnath stated, “Two shops were gutted, and a hay stack at a house’s courtyard was burnt.”

‘Our mothers and sisters’

The chairman of TIPRA Motha Party’s Minority Cell, Mohammad Shah Alam Miah, who visited the affected site on Thursday, January 15, while prohibitory orders under Section 163 of the BNSS were still in place, painted a severe picture of the destruction. After submitting a deputation at Fatikroy Police Station, Miah addressed the media.

“After visiting the place, we were shocked. Where are we living? Is there any system of administration in this state? The tiles of a mosque were burnt, the microphones used for the Azaan were burnt, and the Quran inside was burnt. Cash belonging to the imam worth Rs 35,000, his international passport, and his clothes were all burnt,” Miah said.

“There was a madrasa next to the mosque, which was also set on fire. Along with that mosque, a house was completely burnt and destroyed, as were a truck and two tractors. A wooden shop was set on fire. Next to it there was a goat shop, where he probably sold mutton…the goats were also stolen,” he added.

The administration has failed to provide immediate relief to the affected families, Miah claimed. “The most shameful incident of all is that the administration did not provide any assistance to the 50 to 60 families there. They are still sitting without food,” he alleged.

Moreover, Miah claimed that the victims were being portrayed as perpetrators. “They are dragging our mothers and sisters forward, making them pose for photographs while holding sticks and bottles, trying to brand us as extremists. They will say the bottles contained petrol and claim that our mothers and sisters burned down their own homes. A Class 12 student has been arrested. Those who were attacked are the ones who have been made the accused,” he stated.

Miah also alleged that the police crackdown had created an atmosphere of fear in the village. “There are no men left in the village as police have arrested people randomly. The men ran away and hid themselves out of fear. The women in the village are sitting without food,” he said.

Several women in the village also alleged that the arrested Class 12 student has his board examinations soon and that it is unfair that he is unable to participate in the registration process which has already started.

Speaking to The Wire, Kumarghat SDPO Debnath said that legal action was being initiated against Miah for violating prohibitory orders.

“We are taking legal action against him also, because he went to that place without permission during the promulgation of Section 163 of the BNSS. The statements he gives are spreading hate among other communities,” Debnath said.

“The incident happened and we cannot reverse it, but as a civil society, our duty is to normalise that situation. But the statements he spreads are making the situation worse,” Debnath added.

“I personally went there to the Muslim areas and talked to the people, and everything is normal now. But if they talk to the families whose family members have been arrested, then they will of course speak against us,” he added.

The SDPO emphasised that all national political parties had to take permission from the police before visiting the site.

“We told them to go there after the withdrawal of Section 163 of the BNSS, which was withdrawn today, January 16. As we were busy with the chief minister yesterday, he took the chance and went there. We are investigating the root cause, and you should not stand in the way of our findings,” Debnath stated.

Tripura is burning: Congress

While addressing the media on January 10, Tripura Pradesh Congress president Asish Kumar Saha drew a direct connection between the incident and what he described as a pattern of communal violence under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rule.

“Since BJP rule began in the country, communal divisions have been created across the nation. Sometimes it is Hindu-Muslim, sometimes Hindu-Christian, and sometimes Hindu-Buddhist. There has always been a divide among them. Similarly, in our state under eight years of BJP rule, communal riots have started. This incident is nothing new as similar communal riots have been witnessed earlier in Dharmanagar, Udaipur, and Agartala,” Saha said.

According to Saha, the violence began with a puja subscription demand. “As far as I know, subscription money was demanded from a Muslim shopkeeper for a festival. From there the trouble started, and his shop was vandalised and set on fire. Then his house was also set on fire and vandalised. Even tractors and vehicles were set ablaze. Alongside this, the houses of his relatives were also vandalised and set on fire,” he stated.

Saha sharply criticised the state government’s claims of maintaining law and order. “Even after all this has happened, how can the chief minister claim that law and order in the state is perfectly fine? The chief minister himself knows that the people of the state do not believe what he is saying. That is why he had the state DGP hold a press conference to say that Tripura’s law and order situation is perfectly fine and that good governance is running in the state,” Saha said.

“Is this good governance? Not even 24 hours have passed since the press conference, and everyone is seeing Tripura burning. People of the minority community in Tripura are fleeing in fear. Even after all this, how can he claim that good governance is running in the state?” he questioned.

The Congress president likened the current state of affairs to jungle raj. “A lawless situation is prevailing in the state. According to the information I have received, the youth wing of BJP and the ruling party’s village head and deputy head all went there and created mayhem. I demand strict punishment against all of them,” Saha asserted.

CM’s roadshow 

CPI(M) politburo member and Tripura assembly Leader of Opposition Jitendra Chaudhury, speaking on January 10, alleged systematic cultivation of violence by the local MLA representing the Fatikroy assembly constituency, Sudhangshu Das.

“In our state, particularly in Fatikroy assembly constituency, the MLA is continuously fomenting this violence, and these innocent people are becoming victims of it. I have heard that this incident started at 9 am this morning, and even after the fire service was informed, they were not allowed to reach there. When fire service personnel reached there after about two hours, they could not save anything, so several families have lost everything,” Chaudhury stated.

According to Chaudhury, the violence was triggered by excessive subscription demands. “According to the information we have received, a Muslim timber seller arrived in front of his shop with a truck loaded with sawn timber. At that time, some local people went there to collect subscription money for a fair. It could be that the subscription amount was so high that he refused. After that, those youth spread some communal rumours and started creating mayhem. Then groups of people came from outside and started attacking that place. His shop was burnt, vehicles were set on fire, and houses were vandalised and set on fire,” he said.

Chaudhury drew parallels with previous incidents across the state. “Some leaders of the ruling party have taken the oath of the constitution and become MLAs. These incidents are happening because of their provocative statements, like what happened at Koitor Bari, Gandacherra, and Pekuacherra in Panisagar. And now today at Fatikroy. Such incidents keep happening one after another,” he said.

According to Chaudhury, none of the previous incidents have seen proper accountability.

The CPI(M) politburo member also mentioned that he saw a disturbing video showing affected families alleging police bias.

“A while ago, a video came to us where a woman is saying in front of the camera that her house has been attacked, her shops have been burnt, that the fire service came after two hours, and that they have lost everything. She says that the police are trying to arrest her people. I am verifying how much of this is true. If this is true, it is very unfortunate. I would request the police to deal with this with a strong hand,” Chaudhury said.

The leader of opposition also criticised the chief minister Manik Saha’s response to the crisis. “In our state, the administrative and political executive have no remorse and no sensitivity. This morning when the incident happened, the chief minister was doing a roadshow. He went to Kanchanpur and held a big rally. There is not a single mention of this incident. If he were truly sensitive, he would have left everything else and gone to that place,” Chaudhury said.

Atmosphere of fear

On January 12, a delegation from the Communist Party of India (CPI) attempted to visit the violence-hit Shimultala village but was prevented by police, including SDPO Debnath, citing Section 163 restrictions. The delegation included CPI Tripura state secretary Milan Baidya, state secretariat members Rasbihari Ghosh and Nilmani Deb, women’s leader Hasna Begam and others.

CPI leadership reported that minority communities in the area have been living in extreme fear since the incident, with many families unable to access markets or carry out daily activities. They appealed to the administration to ensure there is no shortage of food and daily necessities for the affected minorities.

The delegation demanded comprehensive assessment of losses suffered by affected minority families and appropriate compensation. They also called for quick repair of damaged religious institutions, mosques, houses, and vehicles.

“Such an atmosphere of fear and unrest has never been seen in the state before,” they stated, strongly urging the administration and government to immediately restore an atmosphere of peace.

Congress doing vote bank politics: Sudhangshu

Cabinet minister and Fatikroy MLA Sudhanshu Das dismissed opposition claims as “false rumours” and accused the Congress of anti-Hindu politics. Addressing the media on January 11, Das urged opposition parties to refrain from spreading communal incitement.

“Even with internet services suspended, attempts are being made through fundraising and provocative statements to mislead the common people,” Das alleged.

The minister claimed that opposition allegations about houses of a particular community being vandalised were fabricated. “Instead of spreading such rumours, I invite the opposition to visit the spot if necessary and see the real situation,” he stated.

“Congress is an anti-Hindu party and has been doing politics of opposition to Sanatan Dharma. Congress only does vote bank politics, whereas the Bharatiya Janata Party does not calculate vote banks,” he added.

Contradicting the fund-collection narrative, Das claimed a bike collided with a truck loaded with timber and set off the fight. “Subsequently, a person named Musabbir Ali came and claimed the timber was his, which further complicated the situation,” he claimed.

Left’s regime

CM Manik Saha, during his North Tripura district tour on January 11, addressed questions raised by the local media regarding the communal disturbance at Shimultala. Saha claimed that the administration was handling the situation with utmost seriousness.

“It is advisable not to make unnecessary political comments on such matters. The administration is working to keep the situation under control,” he remarked and referred to incidents during the Left Front regime. “During CPI(M) rule, similar incidents occurred in Mandwi and Khowai, and even one of their ministers was brutally murdered. What role did they take then?” he asked.

Courtesy: The Wire

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Speaking to the media, as reported in The Times of India, Baraiya had proffered a self-propounded, twisted “theory” on why infant girls aged 4 to 10 months were victims of sexual crimes. “In India, the maximum number of rapes are visited upon women from SC, ST and OBC categories. The theory of rape is, when a man, walking down the road, sees a beautiful, extremely beautiful woman, then his mind could be distracted, a rape may follow (sic),” he had said.

He had then asked: “Are there any extremely beautiful women among SCs, STs and OBCs? Why then are they raped? Because such instructions are given in our religious scripts… It has been mentioned that if you have intimacy with women of these castes then it is the same as going on apilgrimage.”

Left shame-faced, Congress went on the defensive. Party state president Jitu Patwari was forced to issue a statement on Saturday evening saying a criminal who rapes women has no caste or religion. He is simply a criminal who deserves harshest punishment under law … What Phool Singh Baraiya said is his personal opinion. Congress does not agree with it. He has been asked to clarify his remark.”

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