On July 28, 2025, Kavin Selva Ganesh, a 27-year-old Dalit software engineer from Arumugamangalam near Eral in Thoothukudi district, was hacked to death in broad daylight in KTC Nagar, Tirunelveli. The accused, S. Surjith (21), allegedly attacked Kavin with a sickle over his relationship with Surjith’s sister, Subashini, a Siddha practitioner. Kavin and Subashini had been in a long-term inter-caste relationship, which Surjith and his family, belonging to the dominant Maravar community (MBC), vehemently opposed.

Surjith is not just an ordinary civilian — he is the son of two serving Sub-Inspectors in the Tamil Nadu Armed Police, Saravanan and Krishnakumari, both of whom were also named as co-accused in the FIR. Despite this, the couple was only suspended and has not been arrested, triggering public outrage. The FIR has been filed under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 2015, and relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).

According to Kavin’s mother, S. Tamizhselvi, who filed the police complaint, her son had received repeated threats from the accused’s family. On the day of the incident, Surjith reportedly lured Kavin under the pretext of their parents wanting to meet him and then brutally attacked him with a sickle, chasing him down and killing him less than 200 metres from the hospital where Subashini worked. Eyewitnesses, CCTV footage, and multiple media reports corroborate these details.

Petition filed with the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC)

On July 30, 2025, a citizen petition was submitted at the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) headquarters in New Delhi by Shailendar Karthikeyan, law student seeking urgent intervention in the caste-based killing of Kavin Selva Ganesh. He met the Personal Secretary to the Chairperson and submitted detailed documentation, including press clippings. During the interaction, the petitioner was informed that the Commission had already taken suo moto cognizance of the case.

While a formal number was not assigned to the newly submitted petition, the representation was accepted and acknowledged by the Commission. The petitioner urged the Commission to treat the matter with utmost urgency and to include the following demands in its proceedings:

1. Immediate arrest of the accused’s parents — Sub-Inspectors Saravanan and Krishnakumari — who are named in the FIR.
2. Constitution of a fact-finding committee to investigate the role of caste bias and police complicity.
3. NCSC’s ongoing monitoring of investigation and prosecution, including regular status reports from the State Government.
4. Provision of witness protection to the victim’s family, who continue to fear retaliation.

The petition can be accessed here 

Arrest, CB-CID transfer, and body acceptance

In a significant turn of events, Saravanan, a serving Sub-Inspector and father of the main accused Surjith, was arrested by Tamil Nadu police in connection with the caste-based killing of Kavin Selva Ganesh. The arrest came soon after a petition was filed with the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), though it is unclear if the two are directly connected. The case has since been transferred to the CB-CID, reflecting its seriousness and the growing demand for an impartial investigation. Following Saravanan’s arrest, Kavin’s family ended their five-day protest and accepted his body from the Tirunelveli Government Medical College Hospital, where Minister K.N. Nehru and Collector R. Sukumar paid their respects. Notably, the family had earlier rejected the state’s ₹6 lakh compensation, insisting that they sought justice and not money by demanding the immediate arrest of both police officers named in the FIR.

Deafening Silence from Political Leaders

The response from Tamil Nadu’s mainstream political parties has been largely muted, drawing criticism from activists. Only leaders of VCK (Thol Thirumavalavan), NTK (Seeman), and Puthiya Tamilagam (K. Krishnasamy) have issued strong public statements demanding separate legislation to curb honour killings. The silence of ruling and opposition parties has left Dalit voices further isolated.

A Broader Pattern

This is not an isolated incident. Tamil Nadu has seen a disturbing pattern of caste-based honour killings from the 2016 murder of Sankar in Udumalpet to the more recent cases in Cuddalore and Krishnagiri. In most cases, justice has been delayed, and police bias is often evident.

The murder of Kavin Selva Ganesh is a stark reminder that caste continues to determine who gets to love, who gets to live, and who gets away with murder in this country.

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The post Petition filed with NCSC seeks justice in Tirunelveli honour killing of Dalit techie appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Additional City Civil And Session Judge Santhosh Gajanan Bhat had on April 3, framed charges against Revanna under Sections 376(2)(k) (rape by a person in a position of dominance), 376(2)(n) (repeated rape), 354(A) (sexual harassment), 354(B) (assault or use of force with intent to disrobe), 354(C) (voyeurism), 506 (criminal intimidation), and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) and Section 66(e) of the Information Technology Act. 

The Supreme Court of India, had, in November 2024 dismissed the bail plea of ex-MP Prajwal Revanna booked for rape, sexual assault. In August, a Special Investigation Team of Karnataka which is probing four cases of sexual assault and harassment against Revanna submitted a 2,144-page charge sheet. A bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma rejected the plea and observed that Revanna is a very influential person. Appearing for Revanna, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi said that a charge sheet has been filed in the case and section 376 of the IPC was not there in the initial complaint.

The special court had, on April 3 had framed charges against Prajwal Revanna for sexually assaulting the farm labourer who worked for his family. The 1,625-page-long charge sheet, filed on September 14, 2024, said that the woman was sexually assaulted thrice, two times at the family’s farmhouse and once at their residence in Basavanagudi, Bengaluru.

As per prosecution, the victim worked as a maid at a farmhouse owned by the Revanna family. It is claimed that from 2021, during the COVID-19 lockdown, Revanna repeatedly raped her and filmed the assaults in different locations. Further, it is alleged that Revanna used the videos to intimidate and silence her, preventing her from complaining.

The SIT formed in this case is also investigating three cases registered against Prajwal and he is presently in judicial custody. The SIT had arrested Prajwal at the Bengaluru Airport on his arrival from Germany on May 30 last year. He was arrested in Crime No.107/2024, registered with the Holenarasipura Town Police Station.

Senior advocates Ashok Nayak and BN Jagadeesha were special public prosecutors in the case. 

The complainant, the 47-year-old farm labourer, Mridula*, was working at the family farmhouse in Gannikada and also accompanied the family during their trips to Bengaluru. She had accused Prajwal of raping her when he had called her inside the room on the pretext of bringing him water at the farmhouse. He was accused of raping her a second time when she had accompanied the family to their house in Basavangudi, Bengaluru.

According to the chargesheet, the assault took place in 2021 at the Gannikada farmhouse. “Mridula was cleaning a room on the first floor when Prajwal came and asked if the room was cleaned. He then asked her to fetch some water. Mridula came back with a jug (chombu) of water when Prajwal suddenly pulled her inside his room. He then locked the door. Mridula asked him to open the door, “Baagilu tegi anna, bhaya aagutte (Open the door anna, I’m scared),” the chargesheet said. Prajwal responded with “Enu agalla” (Nothing will happen) to her cries and then raped her. The chargesheet said that he recorded the assault on his phone.

A case of kidnapping has also been filed against Prajwal’s parents, HD Revanna and Bhavani, and Prajwal’s relative, Satish Babanna, as Mridula had complained that she was taken to the farm on April 29, 2024, and kept for a few days. This coincided with the time that the videos had started circulating. On May 2, Mridula’s son filed a complaint of kidnapping against Prajwal after he came to know of the videos. At the time, Mridula was forced to record a video saying she was alright and had not been kidnapped. A couple of days later, she managed to escape from the farm where she was being held.

Prajwal has been in jail since June 2024, after complaints of sexual assault and having recorded the encounters on video emerged. 

The complaints started after thousands of video clips of these alleged encounters started circulating during the general elections held last year, when Prajwal, the incumbent MP, was contesting from the Hassan Lok Sabha constituency. A Special Investigation Team was formed to look into all the allegations, and four women came forward with complaints against him. 

Other cases against Revanna

There are three more cases filed against Prajwal Revanna. Of these, the first complaint was filed by Girija* and her daughter, Sunitha*. Prajwal is accused of raping Girija and forcing Sunitha to strip on a video call.  In another case, Prajwal is accused of raping Priya*, a former member of the local body and JD(S) party worker. This assault is said to have taken place at Prajwal’s then official residence in Hassan, says The News Minute. A case of molestation has also been filed against Prajwal by another woman who said that he had molested her when she had approached him to seek help on a personal matter.

* Names of the victims have been changed to protect their identity.

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The post Prajwal Revanna convicted of rape in first case, sentencing of August 2 appeared first on SabrangIndia.

What triggered the abuse?

The incident occurred on Tuesday, July 8, after school staff allegedly discovered bloodstains in a washroom. Instead of handling the situation with discretion and sensitivity, the school principal decided to launch a public and humiliating investigation. According to the police, the girls were herded into the school’s convention hall, where they were shown images of the bloodstains via a projector and asked to identify whether they were on their periods, as reported in The Indian Express.

“Who Is Menstruating?”- Thumbprints and strip searches

Those who disclosed they were menstruating were asked to submit their thumb impressions. Girls who said they were not were taken, one by one, to the washroom by a female attendant who allegedly forced them to remove their clothes and undergo a physical inspection to confirm if they were telling the truth, according to NDTV. One parent of a Class 7 student spoke to Times of India and said, “My daughter came home trembling. She told me she was forced to undress in the washroom, in front of other students. This isn’t discipline; it’s mental harassment”.

Police action and legal charges

According to Thane (Rural) Additional Superintendent of Police Rahul Zalte, the parents protested outside the school premises on Wednesday, demanding strict action against the school staff involved. The police promptly registered an FIR against eight individuals, including the principal, four teachers, the woman attendant, and two trustees.

The accused have been charged under the BNS Sections 74 (assault or use of criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) and 76 (assault or use of criminal force to woman with intent to disrobe), in addition to relevant provisions of the POCSO Act, as reported by Free Press Journal.

On Wednesday evening, the principal and attendant were arrested, and the school management dismissed the principal from her post, officials confirmed. A senior police officer said both women would be produced before a court on Thursday, according to the report of Mumbai Mirror.

Students left traumatised

A particularly harrowing detail emerged when one girl, who had denied menstruating, was accused by the principal of lying. She was reportedly asked, “Why are you using a sanitary pad if you’re not menstruating?” and then forced to give her thumbprint under coercion. Many girls reportedly went home crying and mentally disturbed, revealing the trauma to their families. Parents and local child rights groups have labelled the incident mental and physical abuse, demanding further criminal prosecution and inquiry by the Maharashtra State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (MSCPCR).

Thane Rural Police have stated that they are currently recording statements from students and witnesses. “We are taking the testimonies of other children and school staff, and gathering all electronic and forensic evidence,” said an investigating officer, while speaking to India Today.

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Beed to Delhi: Lawyer beaten in Maharashtra, judge threatened in Delhi—what the path for justice means for women practioners in today’s India

When Courts Fail Survivors: How patriarchy shapes justice in sexual offence against women cases

Surviving Communal Wrath: Women who have defied the silence, demanded accountability from the state

The post Thane School Horror: Principal, attendant arrested for forcing girls to strip in menstruation check, case registered under POCSO appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Thevars [caste Hindus] treat Sikkaliars [Dalits] as slaves so they can utilise them as they wish. They exploit them sexually and make them dig graveyards for high-caste people’s burials. They have to take the death message to Thevars. These are all unpaid services.
— Manibharati, social activist, Madurai district, Tamil Nadu

In the past, twenty to thirty years ago, [Dalits] enjoyed the practice of “untouchability.” In the past, women enjoyed being oppressed by men. They weren’t educated. They didn’t know the world… They enjoy Thevar community men having them as concubines… They cannot afford to react; they are dependent on us for jobs and protection… She wants it from him. He permits it. If he has power, then she has more affection for the landlord.
— A prominent Thevar political leader, Tamil Nadu^[1]

“Dalit” is a term first coined by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, one of the architects of the Indian constitution of 1950 and revered leader of the Dalit movement. It was taken up in the 1970s by the Dalit Panther Movement, which organized to claim rights for “untouchables,” and is now commonly used by rights activists.^[2] Violence against this section of the Indian people, Dalits, who constitute (2011 Census figures) 16.6 per cent of the population is both societal, systemic and instructional cutting through all intersectionality’s. This analysis and graphic visualisation looks at this phenomenon, not contain, today normalised, in 2025.

On June 24, 2025 — The Indian Express reported, “Nine people have been detained after a mob forcibly shaved the heads of two Dalit men and forced them to crawl over allegations of cow smuggling in Odisha’s Ganjam district. According to the police, the victims had bought a cow and two calves and were returning home when a mob accosted them in Kharigumma village under Dharakote police limits and demanded Rs 30,000. When the men expressed inability to pay, the mob allegedly beat them up, forcibly shaved their heads, made them crawl and had them drink sewage water. A video purportedly shows the two men crawling with grass clamped between their teeth as some men follow them. The group also took away cash of Rs 700 from them and their mobile phones, police said.” This is not, unsurprisingly, a stray or isolated event – with CJP recording 113 incidents of anti-Dalit atrocities from the month of January to June.

The all-pervasive caste system has long cemented itself as a fortifying structure of Indian society. With a state machinery that openly runs on a proto-fascist, pro-Hindutva model – the continued marginalisation of Indian minorities has become, in dystopian fashion, extremely normalized in the day-to-day news cycle. This report tries to trace this normalisation by forming understandings of the historical, typological and the systemic nature of the violence enacted upon Dalit and Adivasi/tribal individuals in India by considering data consolidated within the months of January-June.

Historical & Structural Context – Everydayness of Caste Atrocities

One must always remember that caste atrocities in India is not a regime-specific conundrum, and that while there is a strong relationship between the (present, ideologically driven) Hindutva state and the exacerbation of such atrocities — India has had a long, shameful history where the caste system has been entrenched into every facet of living. Ania Loomba, in The Everyday Violence of Caste, writes: “Caste violence in India is one of the most long-standing instances of the routinisation of violence, predating European colonialism although not unshaped by it, and now firmly enmeshed within the new global order. Despite untouchability being constitutionally abolished in 1950, caste oppression is pervasive today. Over 160 million Untouchables- or Dalits- are subject to different forms of discrimination: they are denied access to places of worship, clean water, housing, and land; their children are still kept out of, or ill-treated within, schools; they are forced into menial and degrading occupations, notably manual scavenging; and, despite a governmental policy of affirmative action, they remain largely excluded from the country’s businesses, educational establishments, judicial services, and bureaucracy.1 If violence against lower castes and outcastes is rendered banal by being woven into the fabric of everyday life, it is also conducted via spectacular acts. Dalits are raped and murdered for daring to aspire to land, electricity, drinking water, and to non-Dalit partners. Inter-caste marriages, especially those between lower caste men and women of higher castes, result in murders, kidnapping, and the public punishment of such men and (often) the women involved. Dalit women remain subject to constant sexual assault by upper caste men. In general, caste segregation shapes India’s rural landscape, as well as large parts of its urbanity.”

In Indian society, the entrenched hierarchy of caste is all-pervasive, affecting the lives of Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi individuals – through popular and institutional violence at different scales. This routinization, that Loomba writes about, is a process that has spanned centuries: almost from the birth of Hinduism, as a religion — and therefore, the committing of atrocities has been naturalized into social order. We could invoke Martin Macwan, who rightly wrote, in 2001, “The systematic elimination of six million Jews by Nazis hit us hard on the face because it took place in such a short span of time. In the case of Dalits, though the “genocide” has been systemic, it has taken place at a slow pace. The current government statistics of murder, rape, and assault that Dalits are subjected to paint a horrible picture if extended to a history of 3000 years. We have reason to believe that approximately 2,190,000 Dalits have been murdered, 3,285,000 raped and over 75,000,000 assaulted.”

Methodology and Data Sources

In this report, we use data from CJP’s own database, and from multiple reliable think-tanks, non-governmental organizations, news outlets, legal filings and academic publications. We also take into account cross-verified posts from social media accounts that specialise in hate-watching, reporting on Dalit and Adivasi issues, etc. The data from the National Crime Records Bureau’s own publications has also been used for contextualization.

We have attempted to classify this data on the basis of geography, types of violence, and looked into institutional response: from law enforcement and respective state governments’ attitudes to caste-based violence. The report endeavours to be grounded in intersectionality, taking into account the changing metrics of class and gender, which quite obviously come into play while discussing caste.

Typology of Violence: Key Patterns from 2025

• Violence Against Adivasis and Tribal Populations

Tribal and Adivasi lives have also been rife with violence within the country – being victimised by large scale unrest, institutional crackdowns, and targeted attacks in different parts of the country. While encounters have intensified in the BJP ruled state of Chhattisgarh, and CRPF camps being set-up in the “most vulnerable Maoist locations”, the CPI (Maoist) party has proposed peace talks with the government. This was followed by 200 civil rights groups and individuals urging for the government to show their intent at reaching a ceasefire and some form of agreement. The statement from the signatories of these organizations is as follows,

“It is now exactly 20 years since the state sponsored and now banned Salwa Judum began in Bastar, causing enormous misery in terms of people killed, villages burnt, rapes, starvation, mass displacement and other forms of violence. Since then, the villagers of Bastar have known little peace. They barely returned to their villages when they were faced with Operation Green Hunt and successive operations. Since 2024, under the name of Operation Kagaar, over 400 people have been killed (287 in 2024, 113 in 2025).i While the exact numbers of civilians killed is unknown, given that several of those claimed as Maoists have been identified by villagers as civilians, it is evident that civilians are being disproportionately affected ii. An Article 14 estimate between 2018 and 2022 counts more civilians (335) killed than security personnel (168) and Maoists (327). iii 2024 saw several incidents of children being killed. SATP gives the breakup for 2025 to 15 civilians, 14 security forces and 150 Maoists. The forces have got Rs. 8.24 crore as rewards for these killings.”

Parallely, the centre’s failure at dealing with ethnic clashes in Manipur has drawn widespread criticism from the states – according to Human Rights Watch – at least five people have died and scores injured, including security force members, in recent clashes, alone. On March 8, a man was killed and several were injured in Kangpokpi district when violence broke out after the authorities attempted to restore transportation connections across the state. On March 19, another man was killed following clashes between two tribal communities in the state’s Churachandpur district. The violence, so far, has killed more than 260 people and displaced over 60,000 since May 2023.

Land conflicts have also followed tribal populaces – according to Land Conflict Watch, there are 962 reported ongoing land conflicts in their Conflicts Database. Out of these 116 conflicts are in the Conservatory and Forestry sector, with 459,735 people currently affected. The following charts shows the shares of the kind and numbers of conflict going on in the country, in context of land area and people affected — based on data available from the Conflicts Database of the Land Conflict Watch website.

As mentioned before, while state actors do perpetrate a huge share of the violence borne by the tribal populations in India – this does not mean that they are spared from acts of targeted violence by upper-caste perpetrators.

CJP recorded 74 incidents of anti-Christian violence in India in 2025— out of which, 48 were cases of harassment, assault and violence under the pretext of allegations of conversion. While not all of these were mandated on Adivasi individuals, a bone of contention that the propagators of the formulation of the Hindutva state has with the so called “Christianisation of tribals/Adivasis” has been rooted in ideas of “foreignness”. It is also manifest in the Adivasi v/s Vanvasi formulation, with the RSS and it’s multiple outfits like the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram committed to an alteration/manipulation of the pre-Hindu, Adivasi identity, threatened as they are by the ‘original inhabitant’ argument, before the onset and domination of the “Vedic period” in early Indian history.

A recent book, among several earlier studies on the subject, Kamal Nayan Choubey’s Adivasi or Vanvasi-the politics of Hindutva, observes, “Akhil Bhartiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, popularly known as Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram or VKA is the tribal wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). As the largest tribal organization in the country, it works in many areas of Kerala, Jharkhand and the North-east of India. Till the late 1970s, VKA’s work was limited to a few districts of Chhattisgarh (then Madhya Pradesh), Jharkhand (then Bihar), and Odisha but it has gradually and continuously expanded its footprint in different parts of the country…. It is noteworthy that from its inception VKA focused on spreading Hindu values by organizing religious rituals in tribal areas and working in the area of education and hostels.” Academic works and publications on the methods of RSS’ penetration among tribals stress on the Ekal School, an education model that not just imposes “caste Hindu practices” among Adivasis who’s traditional belief systems are animistic, but also instils an element of the “outsider other” when it comes to the Indian religious minority, the Christian or the Muslim.[3] Studies of the syllabus taught in these schools also reveals how the “project was intended to spread disharmony”. Subsequent incidents of targeted violence in several Adivasi-dominated areas of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh has empirically shown Adivasis adopting an assumed adversarial role against India’s religious minorities.[4][5]

The Washington Post reported in February 2025 about multiple grassroots evangelical pursuits of the grassroots organizations of the far Hindu right, under the pretext of developmental work – has been trying to induct millions of tribal people who have been outside mainstream religion, or are Christians. All of this is conducive to the central ahistorical one-dimensional belief that the converted Adivasi has been stolen away from the “homogenised Hindu original-state” — ignoring all dimensions of oppression, dynamics of caste and struggle, and presenting a dichotomy of the “homegrown” Hinduism and the “foreign” Christianity – ignoring the neo-colonial model that has been replicated by Hindutva outfits. Satianathan Clarke writes for the Harvard Theological Review, “First, Christians, through their sustained service among the Adivasis, “enjoy considerable appreciation of and support for their work from the local population.”37 This presents an obstacle for the Hindutva organizations to infiltrate the Adivasi areas. “The advance of the Parivar [Network of Hindutva organizations] in the tribal area is, therefore, possible only if the Christians are discredited and displaced.” Second, Christians are targeted because of the secular position they have increasingly taken over the last decade. In the context of Hindu communalism’s fascist potential, Christians present a counter model in their “reaching out to secular, liberal and Left formations for joint initiative.” Christianity, especially among Dalits and Adivasis, must be stopped at any cost from being presented as an alternative option to Hindutva. Panikkar’s discussion, I believe, is in line with my claim that Christians are being persecuted because their work among the Dalits and Adivasis is perceived as an effort to thwart the homogenizing aim of Hindutva.”

Besides these, there have been incidents of harassment, and torture, where tribal women have been gang raped, Adivasi people repeatedly subjected to humiliation and assault at the hands of upper caste individuals and community members.

Anti-Dalit Violence

Between the months of January and June, CJP recorded 113 incidents of caste atrocities on Dalit individuals across different states in India. A general categorisation of this violence can be seen as follows.

This chart tells us that out of the 113 cases, assaults had the highest rate of incidence – with a combined percentage of 25.9% [Assault and Assault with the intent of humiliation, combined], followed by high rates of harassment in the form of discrimination – and finally, more grievously, murder and sexual violence – at 20.5% and 18.8% respectively. What is essential for us to remember, is the fact that caste atrocities cannot be neatly separated in clinically placed boxes of violence. Each category is deeply inter-related with the others, and Dalit people, as individuals and as collectives, go through multiple enactments of violence.

Snigdha Adil writes, “The confluence of the material (the body) and the symbolic (language) suggests that the recurrent embodied experiences of exclusions manifest on the caste body and are consequently, articulated; these orations, then, reproduce marginalisation in the lived reality. Such rhetoric is internalised by the Dalit individual, and imposes a state of humiliation and self-loathing upon them. Chakrabarty asserts that the Dalit person’s sense of their body is refracted through a third-person consciousness; it is impossible for the Dalit individual to imagine a reprieve from the corporal schema of degradation that is imposed upon it by the ‘upper’-castes. The process of discrimination as it is enacted against the body and, thereby, shapes (or contorts) it entails the construction of the Dalit (non-)self. To comprehensively understand the agents and methodologies of discrimination within the context of modernity – which is characterised by social mobility through urbanisation, education, and employment opportunities beyond the caste-specific occupational fields – as opposed to the feudal past, one must adopt an archaeological approach towards an understanding of the practice of Untouchability. The camouflage of caste discrimination into innocuous practices to detect and distance the ‘lower’-caste individual despite the external performance of progressive beliefs unveils the “inalterability of the ‘Indian mind’” (Archaeology of Untouchability 219). As one is compelled to operate in ambiguous spaces of social exchange wherein the identity of those one engages with is unknown, exacerbated by the need to concomitantly maintain a façade of transcendence from outdated religious codes as well as the superiority of the self; one must evolve new codes and signifiers that accommodate plausible deniability. … In the same vein, it may be argued that the social, material, and personal deprivation of Dalits is not inherent but maintained through the performance of caste practices and symbols.”

Therefore, we can also make two conclusions from what Adil writes, and a historical study of Brahminical violence on Dalit communities: one, that the nature of attacks is aimed to be a debilitating force on the dignities and the abilities— because the intent behind these attacks is to impinge upon the Dalit sense of self and identity – both individual and communal. Two, the style and the formations of attacks have modified themselves over time while maintaining the same antediluvian spirit of oppression – manifesting through different forms of ostracisation, causation of humiliation, and outright physical and psychological violence.

Structural and systemic violence, cultural and symbolic assertion, physical and sexual violence, caste slurs and verbal abuse, exclusion and boycott are all different forms of atrocities affecting Dalit individuals in India. If we were to look at the data for just the month of June, we would see that all of them can be put into the aforementioned “categories”, or exist at the intersections between two or many of them.

1st June, 2025: A Dalit family was attacked by a group of men with sticks and rods during a wedding ceremony on Friday night, police said. The attackers reportedly shouted caste-based insults, angry that a Dalit family was using a marriage hall in Rasra, Uttar Pradesh. Raghvendra Gautam, the brother of one of the injured men, filed the police complaint. He said, “We were celebrating happily when suddenly a group of men stormed in and shouted, ‘How can Dalits hold a wedding in a hall?’ Then they started beating everyone.” The attack happened at the Swayamvar Marriage Hall around 10:30 p.m. Two people, Ajay Kumar and Manan Kant, were badly hurt and are now in the hospital.

June 1, 2025: A minor Dalit girl who was raped and found with nearly 20 knife wounds in Muzaffarpur died at the Patna Medical College and Hospital on Sunday, June 1, 2025. The 11-year-old was transferred to Patna on Saturday for better medical treatment, but was allegedly left in pain inside the ambulance outside the Patna hospital for about five hours, and was admitted after intervention by Bihar Congress president.

 June 4, 2025: A Tribal woman was gang-raped and then her intestines were pulled out by inserting hands in her rectum, incident happened in Khandwa city of Madhya Pradesh.

June 10, 2025: Dhanush, a Dalit youth employed in an IT firm in Coimbatore, was reportedly in a relationship with a woman from a different religion. He was found hanging at his lover’s residence.

June 18, 2025: Due to not being able to repay a loan of 80 thousand, a Dalit woman was tied to a tree, humiliated and beaten in front of her own child, the child will not be able to forget this shock for the rest of his life, the incident is from Kuppam in Andhra Pradesh. The woman’s husband has left her, she has the responsibility of two children, she earns her living by working as a daily wage labourer.

June 20, 2025: On Sunday, A Dalit teenager who dared to ask for ration was shot dead in broad daylight in Bilhari village in Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh. His brother, Ashish, who had accompanied him, was also injured. 

June 22, 2025: The incident occurred in Dadrapur village, within the limits of Bakewar Police Station, where a group of Brahmin men attacked a Katha Vachak (religious preacher) and his aides for organising Baagavat Katha in the village after discovering that he belongs to a lower caste.”

June 22, 2025: A 13-year-old patient from Meerut admitted to the orthopaedics ward at a top hospital in the city, was allegedly sexually assaulted by a 20-year-old man inside the women’s washroom around 1 am on Sunday. The girl, a Dalit, was being treated for knock knees, and was accompanied by her mother at the facility’s general ward.

June 22, 2025: At a hospital in an Andhra Pradesh district, a 15-year-old girl, almost eight months pregnant, spends her days in a 150-bed ward, surrounded by expectant mothers and wailing infants. Authorities have deemed it dangerous to terminate her pregnancy at this stage, and say sending her home is not an option either – the teenager is the victim of sexual abuse over two years by 14 men, who are from an influential community in the village where the crimes took place.

June 22, 2025: “A shocking incident of caste-based violence has emerged from Etawah district in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday, where members belonging to the Bahujan community were severely assaulted by upper caste men, who brutalised them and forcefully tonsured their hair, urinated on them, for taking part in a religious event.

June 23, 2025: Two Dalit men were allegedly subjected to brutal physical and psychological abuse in Kharigumma village under Dharakote block in Ganjam district.

June 24, 2025: “Dalit assistant professor Dr Ravi has allegedly faced caste discrimination after the principal at SV Veterinary University’s Dairy Technology College in Andhra Pradesh removed the chair from his office, forcing him to work while sitting on the floor. He alleged that he was on leave on Thursday, and when he returned to the college on Friday and went to his room, he found that there was no chair. Associate Dean Ravindra Reddy, who had come to test the milk in the existing device, had removed the chair from his room.”

June 26, 2025: Nearly All Students Withdrawn from Karnataka School After Dalit Woman Appointed Head Cook. “In a shocking incident from Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada district, a 60-year-old differently abled Dalit woman was allegedly raped and robbed by a known history sheeter. The accused, identified as 23-year-old Fairoz Yasin Yaragatti, was later shot in the leg by police during an encounter”

June 27, 2025: On Friday, members of the family were sowing seeds in their land in Narayanapura village of Madhya Pradesh’s Lateri tehsil when some people, allegedly from the Gurjar community, attacked them. The men not only beat up members of the family, including two women, but also snatched their soybean seeds and sowed them in their own field.

Jyoti D. Bhosale, in The Intensification of the Caste Divide: Increasing Violence on the Dalits in Neoliberal India, [emphasis ours] writes, “The increased physical infliction of violence on the Dalits, apart from simply being the perception of threat, is a reactionary response to prevailing psyche steeped in prejudice and caste arrogance and are expressions of retention of privileged positions within the caste order, in spite of long drawn resistance and constitutional efforts against the same. In their study of Bhumihars (landowning caste) and caste violence in Bihar, Nandan and Santosh (2019) argue that in the context of the crumbling down of traditional mode of dominance through upper-caste identity and feudal agrarian structure, and also with the increased representation of OBCs and other lower castes, the goalpost of the Bhumihars has shifted. It has now become that of establishing themselves not as perpetrators of violence but as guardians of Hindutva which also protects their caste identity. They thus resort to ‘symbolic’ violence towards the lower castes, while on the ‘enemies’ of Hindu right-wing ideology, overt violence is inflicted. Can the quantitative reduction of incidents of bodily violence itself account for decreased brutality against the Dalits? Numerous incidents of violence such as Tsundur massacre (1991); Bara massacre (1992); Bathani Tola massacre (1996); Melavalavu violence (1997); Laxmanpur Bathe massacre (1997); Ramabai Killings(1997); Bhungar Khera incident (1999); Kambalapalli violence (2000); Khairlanji massacre (2006); gangrape of Sumanbalai (2009); Mirchpur killings (2010); Dharmapuri violence (2012); Marakkanam violence (2013); Dangawas violence (2015); Ariyalur gangrape (2016); Kanchanatham temple violence (2018); Hathras gangrape and murder (2020) are amongst the very many clear cases of explicit brutality. These challenge the underlying liberal presumption prevalent across social sciences that with progression in time, democratization etc, societies become more civil. There is evidence to say that with such progression, cruelty may not just continue but also sharpen (Rushe and Kirchheimer 2003).

Thus, it will not be erroneous to state that these enactments of violence are located at the juncture of asserting caste-pride, and the violent need to humiliate and assert dominance through forms that adapt and reinvent themselves with the passage of time.

Sexual Violence

Amidst the different forms of violence enacted upon Dalit and Adivasi people, sexual violence happens to be one of the foremost ones.

Sourik Biswas writes for the BBC, “These [Dalit] women, who comprise about 16% of India’s female population, face a “triple burden” of gender bias, caste discrimination and economic deprivation. “The Dalit female belongs to the most oppressed group in the world,” says Dr Suraj Yengde, author of Caste Matters. “She is a victim of the cultures, structures and institutions of oppression, both externally and internally. This manifests in perpetual violence against Dalit women.” Out of the 113 incidents recorded by CJP, 29 were acts of sexual violence. Approximately 10 rape cases are reported every day when it comes to Dalit women.

Manisha Mashaal, the founder of Swabhiman Society, told Equality Now that one of the biggest challenges in cases of sexual violence is that survivors or the families are pressured into compromises with the accused. Community and social pressure plays a major role in impeding access to justice in such cases. Another issue is the lack of quality and effective systems in place to provide the survivors of violence and their families with immediate social, legal, and mental health support along with proper and timely rehabilitation. This pattern of violence also translates to Adivasi women – even intensifying, with the stereotyping of these women as “promiscuous” and an allotted sexual availability – which ultimately reduces them to fetishized commodities. While Behanbox, upon perusal of a report ‘Beyond Rape: Examining The Systemic Oppression Leading To Sexual Violence Against Adivasi Women’ – found that while the two-finger test that checks the hymen and its rupturing has been outlawed by the Supreme Court, in almost 15 of the 32 cases studied had the victims go through them.

It found that according to the National Crime Bureau Report (2022), a total of 10,064 cases were registered for crimes against Scheduled Tribes (STs), an increase of 14.3 per cent over 2021 (8,802 cases). The crime rate increased from 8.4 per cent in 2021 to 9.6 per cent in 2022. The report reveals that 1,347 cases of rape and 1022 cases of assault on Adivasi/Tribal women were reported in 2022.

Mapping Caste Atrocities and Socio-Political Dynamics

The 113 cases that CJP documented were spread out all over the country– which you can see in this map– although some states emerged as hotspots.

As displayed above, the worst offending states were Uttar Pradesh (34 cases), Madhya Pradesh (15), and Tamil Nadu (8). This calculation tracks with NCRB data that the Deccan Herald reported, “About 97.7 per cent of all cases of atrocities against SCs in 2022 were reported from 13 states, with Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh recording the highest number of such crimes, according to a new government report … Of 51,656 cases registered under the law for Scheduled Castes (SCs) in 2022, Uttar Pradesh accounted for 23.78 per cent of the total cases with 12,287, followed by Rajasthan at 8,651 (16.75 per cent) and Madhya Pradesh at 7,732 (14.97 per cent).”

This intensity of caste-based violence in states is deeply reflective of the social structures present within these states and their respective hierarchies.

In Uttar Pradesh, the last caste census was conducted in 1931. According to the data from this census, it was found that only 9.2% of the population was composed of Brahmins, while 7.2% was made up of Rajputs (Thakurs). Sudhir Hindwan’s CASTE AND CLASS VIOLENCE IN THE INDIAN STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH – the intermediary (backward) castes made up about 42 per cent of the population, the scheduled castes 21 per cent and Muslims 15 per cent. While no caste census details are available after that, estimations based on the data from the 2011 census leads us to believe that the 20% of the “forward caste” demographic are composed by the 12% of the populace who are Brahmins, and the remaining 8 the Rajputs.

A report from the policy research lab of Jindal Global University found that out of the 80 constituencies in the state, 23 of the dominant general caste constituencies have representatives from the respective castes, thus indicating a 100% rate of correlation when it comes to caste identity and election of representation. The report states, “Whereas there were 15 constituencies who have OBC as their dominant caste and their MP too comes from the OBC. On the other hand, there are 3 constituencies where Muslims are dominant, and the winning candidate too comes from the same … Out of the 19 winning candidates who won the 2024 parliamentary elections and come from the scheduled caste background, 17 came from those seats which were reserved for the scheduled caste in the elections, thus out of 80 there were only 2 seats where the winning candidate was from the scheduled caste and the seat was not reserved. This highlights the social disparity that persists within the political and social realm of UP.” The maps pictured here represent this disparity when it comes to the distribution of political power among different caste compositions in Uttar Pradesh.

Madhya Pradesh reflects a similar vein of absences. For the 2023 state legislative elections, The Print found on a fieldwork based investigation that the now-ruling party of the state, BJP, had given 34% (79) of its tickets to upper caste candidates, followed by 30% to Backward Classes (69) — while only providing the Scheduled Tribe and the Scheduled Caste candidates 21% (47) and 15% (35) of its tickets — despite being the state with the largest number of tribes. It is also to be remembered that none of these tickets were given to candidates in unreserved constituencies.

This preference given to the provision of tickets to non-Dalit candidates translated in the poll results. The Hindu reported, “Despite its rhetoric over the question of caste census, Congress failed to make a dent in the OBC vote. Thus, BJP’s landslide victory was shaped by an accretion from most social sections, including the OBCs of Madhya Pradesh. Besides consolidating among its upper caste voter base, the BJP this time managed to attract more OBCs and Adivasis compared to 2018.

The Congress stayed significantly ahead of the BJP among SC communities, while other parties bagged 16%. The BSP polled 19% of the Jatav votes; with the Congress securing almost half the Jatav votes. Among the tribal voters, the Congress maintained an advantage over the BJP. The vote share was the closest among the Bhil community with a difference of only 4% between the Congress and BJP. The Congress secured half or more of the votes of other tribal communities; while the BJP managed more than a third of the votes. Congress did get overwhelming support among Muslims, though their population in the State is barely 7%—hardly enough to help the Congress make an impact. As mentioned above, with BJP gaining among Upper Castes, the Congress found very thin support among these sections, including the Rajputs, compared to 2018. In conclusion, it is clear that the BJP has consolidated its traditional upper caste vote bank, along with making significant inroads into the OBC communities in Madhya Pradesh. The Congress’s vote among the SC, ST and minority communities is not large enough to match the BJP’s social bloc.”

Tamil Nadu: Exceptional Violence

Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, has been known for fostering caste-consciousness from time immemorial. The private sphere is an example – where the National Family Health Survey data suggested that the state had one of the lowest rates of inter-caste marriages, only reaching a meagre 2.59%. The state also has the highest number of consanguineous marriages, with a whopping 28% share, as opposed to the national average of 11%. In a report on caste-based tensions in two villages in Tirunelveli, ThePrint reported, “Students wear coloured T-shirts inside their school uniform, which also refer to their caste identity. Sometimes, those T-shirts will also have the image of leaders of their communities,” said the headmaster of a government school in Madurai, who did not wish to be named … “In the village, we reside in Dalit colonies and they reside in the Upper Caste streets. So, once we get into the school, this segregation remains the same; they don’t sit next to us or mingle with us,” said a Class 10 student of a state-run school in Tirunelveli district.”

As the state gears up for the 2026 elections, one sees the carrying over of trends from 2024 Lok Sabha elections, as the BJP tries to shed its image as a Brahminical party in the state, and makes alliances and coalitions with smaller caste-based parties for greater parties. South First reports, “Tamil Nadu’s ruling DMK, despite its anti-caste image, continues to partner with the KMDK, a regional ally whose leaders have made inflammatory caste-based remarks. The DMK’s support for KMDK-led cultural events, such as Valli Kummi performances, is seen as a move to win over the influential Kongu Vellalar Gounder community. Critics say the alliance highlights a growing ideological dissonance, where electoral calculus increasingly trumps the party’s professed commitment to social justice.” Many political theorists, like TN Raghu, have pointed out that the DMK and the AIADMK are two sides of the same coin – where they have alienated their rooting in Periyar’s anti-caste politics for vote banking strategies. Raghu told SF, “Whether in power or not, DMK has never really raised its voice against the dominant castes. Take for instance the honour killing of Sankar and the struggles of Kausalya – DMK never staged major protests or spearheaded movements around such incidents. They fear that aggressively opposing caste oppression will alienate majority caste voters. Often this silence is justified as political strategy … In elections, it is almost like a competition between DMK and AIADMK – who can stay more silent about caste issues and thereby win more votes from caste-dominant Hindu communities.”

Law Enforcement Failures

While most of these cases have never had any political leadership comment anything reformist, or acknowledge the depth of the rot in each state – the police have been equally responsible in lackadaisical delivery of judgement, if not perpetrating the very same violence in themselves. Out of the 113 cases calibrated by CJP when it comes to anti-Dalit atrocities, 9 were cases where the police directly were violent towards the victims, 6 were cases where no action was undertaken, and 5 were cases where it was unclear if a report was filed. Out of the remaining 92 cases where action was undertaken – there were 4 cases where the action undertaken was merely conducive to procedure and not actual ensuring of justice.

This tracks with NCRB data, which states that 12,159 cases of atrocities against STs were pending investigation, and a total of 2,63,512 cases of atrocities against Scheduled Castes (SCs) while 42,512 cases of atrocities against STs went for trial. Conviction percentage under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 in conjunction with the Indian Penal Code (IPC) remained at 36 per cent for SCs and 28.1 per cent for STs. At the end of the year, 96 per cent of cases of atrocities against SCs were pending trial whereas, for STs, the percentage stood at 95.49.

GC Pal, in Caste and Consequences: Looking through the Lens of Violence, writes, “As caste relations are rooted in the social structure, caste traditions and the advent of modernity together produce a new ‘coalition’ between dominant caste perpetrators and the classes (powerful members from their caste groups in community and also from administration). The social status of the accused and its association with larger ‘social class’ plays a significant role in course of access to justice. Overwhelming caste loyalties and sentiments influence the decisions of the personnel in administration and judiciary. Moreover, the administration being represented majorly by the dominant caste members very often show apathy towards the complaints. In this regard, Ambedkar (1989) is of the view that: ‘When law enforcement agency- the police and the judiciary, does not seem to be free from caste prejudice- since they are very much part of the same caste ridden society- expecting law to ensure justice to victims of caste crimes is rather an impractical solution to this perennial social problem.’ That is why, he emphasises that the presence of elaborate legal provisions may not always guarantee rights to social justice, it necessarily depends upon the nature and character of the civil services who administer the principle…‘If the civil services, by reason of its class bias, is in favour of the established social order in which the principle of equality had no place, the new order in the form of equal justice can never come into being’ (ibid)”

Conclusion

This report details the deep rot within the Indian socio-polity, and its exacerbation by the current Hindutva machinery, ideologically driven with accompanying violence against targeted sections as a key tool for penetration. Dalits are one such target.

The way forward, would perhaps be rooting policy action in accountability and welfare, then just vote bank strategy. Over the years, multiple judicial decisions have weakened the PoA, with judgements refusing to grant caste slurs “prima facie value” – when not made in “public view”.

According to Equality Now, the NCWL’s recommendations to India’s Central Government and State Governments outline steps duty-bearers should take to protect Dalit women and girls from sexual violence, and ensure justice and protection:

• Incorporate and effectively implement the abolition of caste-based discrimination and patriarchy in national-level law and policy;
• Recognise Dalit women as a distinct social group; develop and implement policies specifically focused on advancing their rights, wellbeing, equal standing, and protection within the law;
• Produce and disseminate disaggregated data on the status of Dalit women, particularly in government plans and development programmes; address intersectional forms of discrimination throughout the criminal justice system;
• Ensure full and strict implementation of existing legal protections, particularly the Scheduled Castes & Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and the timely investigation and disposal of cases of violence against Dalit women and girls;
• Organise, support and fund community-based education, legal literacy and training programmes that improve understanding of intersectional discrimination and violence, including combating casteist and sexist stereotypes amongst criminal justice system officials; empower Dalit communities to better understand their legal and constitutional rights;
• Recognise that economic dependence is a significant reason behind Dalit women not filing police complaints; deliver a national plan with separate funding aimed at accelerating efforts to reduce the poverty gap between Dalit communities and the general population;
• Ensure Dalit survivors who report sexual violence are legally protected by the state from retaliation by the accused; prevent further violence targeting them, such as through social boycotts, and impose restrictions on these;
• Provide Dalit survivors and family members with immediate and longer-term assistance including medical aid, free legal aid, psycho-social support services and counselling, and quality, holistic rehabilitation.

Key to these systemic changes is acknowledgement of the deep-rootedness of the problem. Indian society and politics, resistant and rigid against such self-scrutiny when it comes to caste bias and communalism, has remained obdurate in its inability internalise this malaise. Until that happens, any measures taken to address the issue could remain palliative.

(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this graphic visualisation report has been worked on by Saptaparma Samajdar)

Sources

1. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/dalit-men-tonsured-forced-crawl-cow-smuggling-allegations-odisha-10083930/
2. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/606848/pdf
3. http://www.india-seminar.c0m/2001/508/508%20martin%20macwan.htm.
4. https://thewire.in/rights/maoists-government-dialogue-plea-salwa-judum-chhattisgarh-adivasi
5. https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/03/27/india-ethnic-clashes-restart-manipur
6. https://www.landconflictwatch.org/all-conflicts
7. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/harvard-theological-review/article/abs/hindutva-religious-and-ethnocultural-minorities-and-indianchristian-theology/E61809FF5F9D5A78D9E9A6E817226B39
8. https://syahissc.wordpress.com/2023/12/10/the-banality-of-caste-recognising-caste-through-concealment-narratives/
9. https://revistascientificas.us.es/index.php/araucaria/article/view/27036/24166
10. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-54418513
11. https://equalitynow.org/press_release/india_caste_system_preventing_justice_nov2020/
12. https://www.ncwl.org.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BEYOND-RAPEv1.0.pdf
13. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48504938
14. https://jgu.edu.in/jsgp/jindal-policy-research-lab/caste-and-victory-uttar-pradesh-analysis/
15. https://theprint.in/opinion/bjps-madhya-pradesh-candidate-list-lacks-obc-representation-congress-can-best-it/1837583/
16. https://www.thehindu.com/elections/madhya-pradesh-assembly/the-role-of-castes-and-communities-in-madhya-pradesh-vote-share/article67611007.ece
17. https://theprint.in/india/not-just-wristbands-life-in-tamil-nadu-schools-is-caste-coded-punishments-to-t-shirts/2160880
18. https://www.ncwl.org.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BEYOND-RAPEv1.0.pdf
19. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48644566?searchText=&searchUri=&ab_segments=&searchKey=&refreqid=fastly-default%3A822b3e6ad5e2a5029ebffd9856f2a875&initiator=recommender&seq=7
20. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/not-every-insult-against-scst-persons-can-be-considered-as-offence-under-scst-protection-law-says-supreme-court/article68559244.ece
21. https://equalitynow.org/news/press-releases/indias_government_must_do_more_to_end_caste_based_sexual_violence_say_dalit_womens_rights_activists/
22. https://www.9dashline.com/article/narrating-violence-is-hindutva-responsible-for-violence-against-indias-christians
23. https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/hindutva-groups-increase-attacks-on-india-s-christian-school/
24. https://theprint.in/india/adivasi-identity-st-status-politics-whats-fuelling-anti-christian-attacks-in-chhattisgarh/1305275/

[1] From Human Rights Watch’s pathbreaking 1999 Report, Broken People. These quotations are from: 1 Human Rights Watch interview, Ahmedabad district, Gujarat, July 23, 1998. See explanation of manual scavenging below in the Summary and in Chapter VII. 2 Human Rights Watch interview, Madurai district, Tamil Nadu, February 17, 1998. 3 Human Rights Watch interview, Madurai city, Tamil Nadu, February 18, 1998. https://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/india/India994-02.htm#P350_19723

[2] “Dalit” is a term first coined by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, one of the architects of the Indian constitution of 1950 and revered leader of the Dalit movement. It was taken up in the 1970s by the Dalit Panther Movement, which organized to claim rights for “untouchables,” and is now commonly used by rights activists.

[3] https://www.amazon.in/Adivasi-Vanvasi-Tribal-Politics-Hindutva/dp/0143470485 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09731849241260929;

[4] A Committee set up by the Ministry of Human Resource Development and headed by Avdhash Kaushal reported on Ekal Vidyalaya schools in the Singhbhum district in Jharkhand and in the Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts in Assam. The Committee’s report, submitted to the MHRD in 2005, brings out the communalisation that is rampant in these schools and in their curriculum and textual materialsThe teacher at the Ekal Vidyalaya in Chirchi in Tantnagar block, Singhbhum district, proudly claimed that rather than imparting alphabetical knowledge, he was more intent on protecting “Hindu culture”. He also boasted of his role along with other colleagues in the illegal destruction of a half-built church in the village in 2002. The report states: “The training to the teachers of Ekal schools was mainly to spread communal disharmony in the communities and also to inculcate a fundamentalist political ideology… creating enmity amongst communities on the basis of religion.” The complete report, ‘Final Report on the field visit and observations of Mr Avdhash Kaushal for Singhbhum district in Jharkhand and Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts in Assam’, can be accessed at: http://www.sabrang.com/khoj/ekal_report.pdf

[5] MS Golwalkar, the chief ideologue of the RSS had espoused in We or Our Nationhood Defined, “…only those movements are true ‘National’ that aims at re-building, re-vitalising and emancipating from its present stupor, the Hindu Nation. Those only are nationalist patriots, who, with the aspiration to glorify the Hindu race and Nation next to their heart, are prompted into activity and strive to achieve that goal. All others are eithertraitors and enemies to the National cause, or, to take a charitable view, idiots…outsiders, bound by all the codes and conventions of the Nation, at the sufferance of the Nation and deserving of no special protection, far less any privilege or rights. There are only two courses open to the foreign elements (Christians and Muslims), either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race. That is the only sound view on the minorities’ problem’; https://sabrangindia.in/document/we-or-our-nationhood-defined-1947-edition/

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The case involved K. Umadevi, an English teacher in a government school in Tamil Nadu, whose personal circumstances brought a crucial service rule under judicial scrutiny. The judgment is a detailed exploration of how personal life changes, such as divorce and remarriage, intersect with employment rights, and how courts must adopt a purposive and humane approach rather than a rigid, technical one.

The facts of the Case

The story of the legal battle began with the petitioner marrying her first husband in 2006 and had two children, born in 2007 and 2011. In December 2012, she joined the Tamil Nadu state government as a teacher. Her first marriage was legally dissolved in 2017, and the custody of her two children remained with her former husband.

A year later, in 2018, Ms. Umadevi remarried. When she conceived a child from this second marriage, she applied for maternity leave for a period of nine months, from August 2021 to May 2022.

Her request was turned down. On August 28, 2021, the Chief Educational Officer of Dharmapuri District rejected her application. The reason cited was Rule 101(a) of the Tamil Nadu Fundamental Rules, which governs the service conditions of state employees. The rule stipulates that maternity leave can only be granted to a woman government servant with “less than two surviving children.” The authorities concluded that since Ms. Umadevi already had two children from her first marriage, she was ineligible for maternity leave for her third child. The rejection order flatly stated that there was “no provision” for granting such leave for a third child born through remarriage.

The Journey through the Courts

Aggrieved by this decision, Ms. Umadevi approached the Madras High Court. A single-judge bench heard her plea and, in a judgment dated March 25, 2022, ruled in her favour. The judge adopted a liberal interpretation, holding that the central Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, should prevail over the state rule. The court reasoned that the phrase “having surviving children” should imply that the children are in the mother’s custody. Since Ms. Umadevi’s children from her first marriage were not living with her, the child from her second marriage was, for all practical purposes, her first child in her new family unit. The single judge set aside the rejection order and directed the state to sanction her leave.

However, the relief was short-lived. The Government of Tamil Nadu filed an appeal before a Division Bench of the same court. On September 14, 2022, the Division Bench overturned the single judge’s order. It took a stricter view, stating that the government’s policy was clear and restricted the benefit to two children. It held that maternity leave was not a fundamental right but a right flowing from service rules. The bench found the single judge’s decision unsustainable and allowed the government’s appeal, leaving Ms. Umadevi without the benefit.

This set the stage for the final appeal before the Supreme Court of India.

The Supreme Court’s analysis

The Supreme Court, in a detailed and empathetic judgment authored by Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, delved deep into the constitutional and international legal frameworks surrounding maternity rights.

The state government argued that its policy was tied to fiscal responsibility and the national objective of population control. Granting leave to Ms. Umadevi, it contended, would set a precedent that could strain the exchequer and undermine the “small family norm.”

The petitioner’s counsel argued that the Division Bench had erred by not following the spirit of a previous Supreme Court decision in Deepika Singh vs. Central Administrative Tribunal, which had dealt with a similar situation. It was also emphasized that the right to maternity leave is a facet of a woman’s reproductive right, which is protected under Article 21 of the Constitution—the right to life and personal liberty.

The Supreme Court’s reasoning was multi-layered:

1. Constitutional Foundation: The Court grounded its decision firmly in the Constitution. It described Article 21 as a “potent provision” that includes the right to live with dignity, the right to health, and the right to make reproductive choices. It also invoked Article 42, a Directive Principle of State Policy, which mandates the state to make provisions for “just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief.”
2. Harmonising Conflicting Goals: The Court acknowledged the state’s objective of population control as “laudable.” However, it stated that this goal is not “mutually exclusive” with the objective of providing maternity benefits. The two, the Court said, “must be harmonized in a purposive and rationale manner to achieve the social objective.” A rigid rule that forces a woman to choose between her employment and her desire to start a family in a new marriage was seen as counterproductive.
3. Purposive Interpretation: The Court stressed that beneficial legislations like maternity leave rules must be given a “purpose-oriented approach.” The purpose is to protect the dignity of motherhood and enable a woman to care for her child without fear of losing her job. The fact that Ms. Umadevi’s children from her first marriage were not in her custody and that the child in question was the first from her subsisting marriage were crucial factors. The Court implicitly suggested that the term “surviving children” in the rule should not be read in a purely statistical or biological sense, but in the context of the employee’s current family and dependents.
4. International Obligations: The judgment extensively referenced international conventions that India has ratified, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes that “motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance,” and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which obligates states to provide maternity leave with pay. The Court used these to underscore that maternity benefits are a globally recognized human right.
5. Guidance from the Maternity Benefit Act: The Court drew guidance from the provisions of the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961. It noted that the Act, after the 2017 amendment, does not completely bar maternity leave for a third child; it only reduces the duration of the leave. This, the Court observed, shows a legislative intent to provide support, not to create a hard stop after two children.

The Verdict

The Supreme Court concluded that the view taken by the Madras High Court’s Division Bench was incorrect. It stated, “In the circumstances, we are unable to agree with the view taken by the Division Bench of the High Court.”

The Court declared that Ms. Umadevi was entitled to maternity leave as per the rules. It set aside the Division Bench’s order and directed the Tamil Nadu government to release all admissible maternity benefits to her within two months.

The judgment is a significant step forward in the jurisprudence of service law and human rights. It sends a clear message that administrative rules, especially those concerning fundamental aspects of life like childbirth, reproductive rights cannot be interpreted in a vacuum. They must be viewed through the prism of the Constitution and with a sense of compassion that acknowledges the complex realities of human lives. The Court has affirmed that the state, as a model employer, must not only create policies but also apply them in a manner that is just, humane, and respects the dignity of its employees.

(The author is part of the legal research team of the organisation)

Related:

Maternity leave no ground for dismissal: SC

Woman Employee Entitled To Claim Maternity Leave For Period Of 6 Months: Allahabad HC

Policy on paid menstrual leave not on the horizons of the union government?

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The case, Viswanathan Krishna Murthy & Ors. v. The State of Andhra Pradesh & Anr., involved a complaint by Pokala Sabhana, a 24-year-old trans woman. She alleged that her husband, Viswanathan Krishna Murthy, and his family had subjected her to cruelty and harassment. She filed her complaint under Section 498-A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), a law designed to protect wives from abuse by their husbands and in-laws.

This led the court to consider two key questions: first, whether a Trans woman could be considered a ‘woman’ under this law, and second, whether the allegations were sufficient to warrant a criminal trial. The court’s answer to the first was a clear “yes,” but its answer to the second was a firm “no”.

A Trans Woman is a ‘Woman’ Under the Law

The husband and his family argued that Sabhana could not be considered a ‘woman’ under Section 498-A, because she cannot bear children and therefore was not a woman in the “complete sense”.

Dr. Justice Venkata Jyothirmai Pratapa rejected this argument, calling it “deeply flawed and legally impermissible”. The court’s reasoning was built on established legal principles:

• Womanhood is not defined by reproductive ability: The court stated that linking womanhood to the capacity to have children “undermines the very spirit of the Constitution, which upholds dignity, identity, and equality for all individuals”.
• Right to Self-Identify Gender: The judgment relied heavily on the Supreme Court’s 2014 National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) v. Union of India The NALSA case established that every individual has the fundamental right to self-identify their gender, and the state must legally recognize it.
• Right to Marry: The court also cited the Supreme Court’s 2023 marriage equality case, Supriyo @ Supriya Chakraborty v. Union of India. While that case did not legalize same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court was unanimous in holding that “transgender persons in heterosexual relationships have the right to marry under existing law”.
• Constitutional Protections: Since Sabhana and Murthy’s marriage was legally valid, denying her the protections of Section 498-A would violate her fundamental rights to equality (Article 14), non-discrimination (Article 15), and life with dignity (Article 21).

Based on this, the court concluded that a Trans woman in a heterosexual marriage is entitled to protection under Section 498-A of the IPC.

Why the Case Was Dismissed

Despite this landmark finding, the court quashed the criminal proceedings against Murthy and his family. The reason was purely procedural: Sabhana’s complaint lacked the specific details required to sustain a charge of cruelty under Section 498-A.

The court found the allegations to be “bald and omnibus,” meaning that they are too vague and general to be the basis for a criminal case. The specific deficiencies noted were:

• Against the husband: The complaint stated that he left her less than two months after they started living together and that she later received a threatening message from his phone. However, it did not describe any specific acts of physical or mental cruelty that occurred while they were together.
• Against the in-laws: Sabhana stated in her complaint that her in-laws maintained “cordial relations” with her. The only negative claim was that they were trying to send their son abroad, which is not a criminal offense.
• Against another relative: A fourth person was accused with a single sentence claiming he was directing the others, with no supporting details.

The court pointed to a long line of Supreme Court rulings that caution against the misuse of Section 498-A. To prevent the law from being used to settle personal scores, courts require complaints to contain clear and specific allegations against each accused person. Because Sabhana’s complaint did not meet this standard, the court ruled that allowing the case to continue would be an “abuse of process of law”.

The judgment in Viswanathan Krishna Murthy is a significant step forward for the legal recognition of transgender rights in India. It establishes a clear precedent that the protections against domestic cruelty apply to Trans women in heterosexual marriages.

Jurisdictions like the UK and the US are seeing radical Trans exclusionary policies and establishments with figures like JK Rowling and Donald Trump respectively. For example, in a recent case, the UK Supreme Court has ruled that legal definition of woman is based on biological sex.[1] Therefore, judgements like these highlight the nuanced discourse that is emerging India with contributions from a powerful judiciary. However, it is important to note that judicial pronouncements cannot and will not satisfy the need for a comprehensive law that recognises queer marriage. Only a democratic and transparent legislative process will cover that gap.

(The author is part of the legal research team of the organisation)

[1] For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16

Related:

Kerala High Court Upholds Tribunal’s Order Directing PSC To Provisionally Accept Trans-Woman’s Application For Post Confined To Women Candidates

Indian women, transgender and non-binary persons in science: A 21st Century calendar by TLoS

Transgender rights in India: stalled progress and a frustrated community

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The recently released World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025 delivers a sobering reality check for India: India ranks 131st out of 148 countries, with a gender parity score of 64.1%, despite global strides elsewhere. Despite slight gains in economic participation and education, India continues to struggle to unlock the potential of half its population. The ranking is not a mere statistic but represents a fundamental economic and social crisis that demands urgent, systemic intervention. Let us examine why: India’s gender gap extends beyond the women workforce participation rate, which stands at a dismal 29.9% in terms of earned income parity. It can be seen embedded deep into institutional frameworks that systematically exclude women from decision-making spheres. Women hold just 13.8% of parliamentary seats and a mere 5.6% of ministerial positions, reflecting the entrenched male dominance in India’s power structures.

The political underrepresentation unfortunately creates a continued cycle of failure to consistently address women and their lived realities. Globally, women constitute 41.2% of the workforce, however they hold merely 28.8% of leadership positions worldwide. In 2024, Indian women occupied 18.3% of senior leadership roles, a slight decrease from the 2023 peak of 18.7%. The issue is not women’s capability or ambition, but an ecosystem that persistently undervalues their contributions.

Beyond Employment: Reimagining Social Architecture

India’s gender parity efforts remain narrowly focused on employment schemes and quotas, missing the broader task of reforming foundational social structures. True transformation requires dismantling the invisible architecture of inequality shaping every aspect of Indian women’s lives right from childhood to leadership. This also requires that we begin from the education systems as well, for example, educational reform must transcend mere access to challenge curriculums that reinforce gender stereotypes. Educational institutions need to proactively counteract societal messaging that limits any girl’s aspirations in Science, Technology, Leadership and Entrepreneurship. This means training educators to recognize unconscious bias, revising textbooks to include diverse female role models, and establishing mentorship programs that steer young women toward leadership. In fact some states like Kerala have already started doing this and we need more states across the country to follow suit.

Urban planning must prioritize women’s safety and facilitate mobility through thoughtful infrastructure. Cities designed with women’s needs in mind that focus on adequate streetlights, accessible public transportation, childcare facilities near workplaces and safe public spaces, often directly impact women’s economic participation. When women feel secure moving through urban environments results in enhanced professional opportunities expand exponentially.

Workplace transformation requires more than maternity leave policies. Organizations need comprehensive support systems including flexible working arrangements, on-site childcare, equal parental leave and zero-tolerance harassment policies. These changes aren’t corporate social responsibility initiatives, rather they are strategic investments in talent retention and productivity.

The Political Will Imperative

Gender parity is not yet treated as the economic emergency it is. Yet research consistently shows that countries with higher gender equality experience faster economic growth, greater innovation, and more resilient societies. India’s demographic dividend—its large young population—remains half-spent when women are systematically excluded from productive participation. The Women’s Reservation Bill passed in 2023 after 27 years of legislative delays, promises change where it states that there will be reservation of one-third of parliamentary and legislative seats, albeit in 2029. Even before WRB’s implementation, political parties can voluntarily field more women candidates—an immediate, tangible show of commitment to equality.

Cultural Reengineering: The Ultimate Challenge

India needs deliberate cultural reengineering that challenges fundamental assumptions about gender roles. Media must evolve beyond glorifying female sacrifice and start showcasing stories of women’s leadership, ambition, and success. Entertainment, advertising and news coverage also shape societal perceptions; all such platforms need to actively counteract stereotypes that limit women’s potential. Family norms, especially those rooted in son preference, demand intentional change.Men must be encouraged to share childcare and domestic duties, support women’s careers, and celebrate daughters as enthusiastically as sons. Not all these changes need legislative influence, most of these require sustained social dialogue and role-modeling by influential figures. When respected voices within communities’ advocate for women’s education, professional participation and leadership, social change accelerates.

The Economic Imperative

India’s goal of becoming a developed economy by 2047 is incompatible with persistent gender inequality. Countries that have achieved sustained prosperity—from Nordic nations to East Asian tigers—prioritized women’s economic participation as a development cornerstone. India cannot afford to waste half its human capital while competing in a knowledge-based global economy. The demographic window is closing. India’s working-age population advantage will diminish within decades. Maximizing this advantage requires full utilization of both male and female talent. Each year of inaction bleeds trillions in lost economic potential.

India’s gender gap demands an ecosystem-wide approach—addressing legal, economic, educational, infrastructural, and cultural systems in tandem. Now we need coordinated action across government levels, private sector leadership, civil society engagement and individual behavior change. Most importantly, we need for gender equality to be viewed not as a women’s issue but as a national economic priority that determines India’s global competitiveness. The choice is clear: India must embrace radical change to unlock its full potential. The demographic dividend is fleeting.

About Author

Dr. Varsha Pillai

Dr. Varsha Pillai, a seasoned communications professional with over two decades of experience, currently leads Gender Diversity and Advocacy initiatives for Women in Manufacturing at Tata Electronics. Her journey is anchored by a PhD from Symbiosis International University (2022), where her research focused on Gender Advocacy in Digital Media. Recognized internationally through prestigious fellowships including the NFAI Research Fellowship, Netherlands Fellowship, and Think Tank Initiative Fellowship in Geneva, she was named a Changemaker by Change.Org India in 2022. Her expertise spans sustainability communications, DEI initiative, and policy advocacy across corporate and nonprofit sectors, where she combines academic insight with practical implementation.

Courtesy: The AIDEM

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Both cases have exposed the terrifying impunity with which caste- and tribe-based violence continues to unfold, and the utter failure of systems meant to protect vulnerable children. As outrage grows, questions are being raised not just about the perpetrators, but about a state structure that remains indifferent to the safety and dignity of its most marginalised.

10-year-old Adivasi girl stripped and burned

Even as outrage over the gang-rape case mounted, another incident emerged from a different part of Andhra Pradesh—this time allegedly involving a 10-year-old tribal girl from the Scheduled Tribe (ST) community. The child was falsely accused of stealing a mobile phone. In a disturbing act of mob violence and humiliation, she was allegedly stripped of her clothes and her body was burned with a hot stick, inflicting grievous injuries.

As per a report of NDTV, the child, Chenchamma, lived with her aunt, Sannari Manikyam, at the Scheduled Tribe Colony in Kuditepalem Kakarla Dibba of the district. Suspecting that Chenchamma stole a mobile phone from a nearby house, the neighbours allegedly burned her body with a hot iron rod and beat her. 

As per the report of the Indian Express, the police in Indukurupet Mandal in Nellore detained at least two people in connection with the alleged torture of the girl. Other neighbours heard the girl’s cries when she was allegedly being burnt with a hot iron rod on her cheeks. They rescued her and called the police before shifting her to a government hospital, where she was given treatment and discharged.

“The girl denied going to the neighbour’s house, let alone stealing a phone, and claimed innocence. We have registered an FIR and detained two people for questioning,’’ an officer from the Indukurupet police station said, as per the IE report.

Two years of silence: Minor Dalit girl raped for two years by 17 individuals

In a case that has exposed the horrific intersections of caste, gender, and institutional apathy, a 15-year-old Dalit girl from Sri Satya Sai district in Andhra Pradesh has been found eight months pregnant after allegedly being gang-raped by 17 individuals over a period of nearly two years. The abuse, police say, began when the girl was just 13 years old and continued in silence—unreported and unchecked—until earlier this month, when her mother finally approached the authorities.

Thirteen of the 17 accused have been arrested so far, including three minors. The main accused, who is believed to have initiated the cycle of abuse, remains absconding. All the adult accused have been remanded to judicial custody, while the minors are under the jurisdiction of the Juvenile Justice Board. A case has been registered under several stringent provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), and the Information Technology Act, 2000.

A cycle of exploitation and silence: According to the police investigation, the abuse began when the girl was studying in Class 8. After her father’s death three years ago, she and her mother—belonging to the Madiga (Scheduled Caste) community—had moved to a small village near the Karnataka border. The family, impoverished and socially marginalised, was struggling to survive.

As per the report of India Today, one day, after school, the girl and her SC classmate were reportedly photographed by a member of the local Boya community. The Boyas are a dominant and politically influential caste in the region. The accused used these images to blackmail the girl, threatening to release them on social media. Two men then sexually assaulted her. The incident was filmed and circulated among their acquaintances, leading to a pattern of repeated rape by at least 14 men over two years.

The remand report and survivor’s statement reveal that the blackmail, coercion, and threats never stopped. As per a report of the Indian Express, “It was her age, her caste, and her social vulnerability that made her easy prey,” said District Superintendent of Police V Ratna. “The exploitation was systematic and prolonged. This was not just one incident, it was organised abuse that continued for two years.”

The men who allegedly assaulted her are aged between 18 and 51. Most of them belong to the Boya community, while three others, including her classmate, are from the SC community and are being investigated for failing to report the abuse.

Arrests and charges: On June 9, police arrested six individuals:

• Achampalli Vardhan (21)
• Talari Murali (25)
• Badagorla Nandavardhan Raj alias Nanda (23)
• Arencheru Nagaraju alias Haryana Cheruvu Nagaraju (51)
• Boya Sanjeev (40)
• Budida Rajanna (49)

Seven others were arrested the following day, including minors. The main accused remains at large. Police say several of those arrested already have criminal records. A special investigation team has been formed under Dharmavaram subdivision to trace the absconding accused, as per The Week.

The case has been registered under sections related to rape, gang-rape, criminal intimidation, and the use of technology for exploitation. The police have also sought permission for a DNA test on the unborn child, which will be critical for the prosecution.

Systemic failure at every level

This case has laid bare deep institutional failings. Despite being a government school student, the girl dropped out of Class 10—a critical academic year—without her teachers raising any concern or notifying authorities. “It is unimaginable that a child disappears from school and nobody asks why,” said SP Ratna, as reported by IE. “Even after she became visibly pregnant, nobody in the village reported it.”

Local welfare structures, too, failed to intervene. The Grama Mahila Samrakshana Karyadarsi, a village-level cadre of women volunteers who serve as ‘Mahila Police’, did not conduct any welfare checks. Neither did Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers, who are supposed to monitor maternal and child health at the community level.

“We are looking into these failures. These systems are in place specifically to protect vulnerable children. Their inaction has consequences,” Ratna added, according to the IE report.

Caste, power and pressure to stay silent: According to local officials, who spoke with the IE, the caste dynamics in the village were crucial in enabling the silence. The survivor’s family belongs to the Madiga community, a Scheduled Caste group with minimal presence in the village. Of the 17 accused, 14 belong to the powerful Boya community. Police say that when the case began to unravel, Boya community leaders attempted to suppress it by pressuring the girl to marry her SC classmate—one of the minors now under investigation—to give the appearance of consent and close the matter.

“Despite the survivor being visibly pregnant, no one reported the crime. The silence of the village was not accidental—it was imposed through caste hierarchies and social fear,” said a senior official involved in the investigation as per the IE report.

Ongoing care and state protection: As per the report of Deccan Herald, the survivor is now under medical care at the Government General Hospital in Anantapur. Doctors have confirmed that abortion is not an option due to the advanced stage of pregnancy. The girl, who is anaemic and struggling with depression, is receiving counselling, nutritional support, and round-the-clock care.

She will not be sent back to the village after delivery. Instead, both mother and newborn will be shifted to a state-run women’s shelter. “We fear coercion. Even from jail, these men could pressure the family to withdraw the case,” the SP said, as per IE report.

The state has also moved to obtain court permission for DNA testing of the unborn child. Police say this will strengthen the case and help establish individual responsibility among the accused.

Political fallout: The case has triggered political controversy and public outrage. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu expressed shock over the incident, calling for swift investigation, speedy trial, and strict punishment for the accused. “Strong evidence must be collected to ensure that the guilty do not escape justice,” he said in a statement.

Opposition leader and former Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSR Congress Party, however, accused the TDP government of shielding perpetrators with political links. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Reddy wrote: “As an indicator of Govt’s insensitivity, the state has witnessed 188 rapes and 15 rape-murders in one year. Even recently, an Intermediate tribal student from Anantapur was found murdered and dumped in the woods after a brutal attack.”

He further questioned the TDP’s commitment to women’s safety, calling the situation “disgraceful” and “preposterous”.

Systemic negligence and caste impunity

The intersection of caste, poverty, and gender has made SC/ST girls disproportionately vulnerable to abuse. Both these cases reveal not just individual acts of brutality, but a pattern of systemic neglect, caste dominance, and institutional collapse. In the Dalit girl’s case, school teachers failed to follow up on her sudden dropout in Class 10. ASHA workers, Mahila Police volunteers, and child protection officials did not intervene despite visible red flags. In the tribal child’s case, the violence remained hidden until the neighbours raised an alarm.

The lack of early intervention, social stigma, and fear of dominant caste groups contributed to the silence in both cases. In the gang-rape case, Boya community leaders reportedly tried to pressure the survivor into marriage to close the matter. In the tribal girl’s case, no community elder stepped in to stop the torture or report the crime.

Related:

Rajasthan’s rape crisis: a string of horrific crimes challenges the state’s record on women’s safety

Encroachment or erasure? India’s demolition wave and the law

Mapping Hate: The Pahalgam Attack and its ripple effects

A Pattern of Impunity? This report details horrific crimes against Dalits in UP, Rajasthan, MP and beyond

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Recent months have laid bare a chilling pattern of brutal rapes and assaults across Rajasthan, each incident a stark testament to a deeply entrenched societal malaise.

From the unimaginable violation of a female patient within the sterile confines of an ICU in Alwar, subjected to rape by hospital staff while undergoing treatment, to parallel and equally horrific occurrences echoing from Bikaner, Barmer, and Tonk even in the state capital, Jaipur.

Alwar: Female patient raped inside hospital ICU, fearing Job losses staff, asked for forgiveness

On June 4, 2025, in a deeply disturbing incident, a female patient in the ICU of ESIC Medical College Hospital in Alwar’s MIA area was allegedly raped by a nursing staff member. The incident occurred around 1:30 AM on June 4, 2025. The 32-year-old victim, who had been admitted on June 2 for a tubal operation and moved to the ICU on June 4, recounted the horrifying ordeal to her husband the following day after regaining consciousness.

According to Police, the victim’s husband filed a report stating that a guard had asked him to leave the room around 11 p.m. on June 4, after which the nursing staffer entered. The victim’s husband further detailed that his wife was not fully conscious or able to move, preventing her from resisting the assault by the nursing staff member, who had drawn a curtain around her. The rapist reportedly told her he was a doctor performing an operation.

Accused confessed to the crime in front of doctor

On June 6, the accused nursing staff member, identified as Subhash Gathala from Sikar, confessed to the crime in front of Dr. Deepika. ESIC Medical College Dean Aseem Das confirmed that a case has been registered, and an administrative inquiry team has been formed. The victim’s family registered a complaint at MIA Police Station, and police are investigating.

Alarmingly, hospital staff allegedly attempted to cover up the incident, telling the victim’s husband to “forgive him, or others will lose their jobs.” The husband, however, insisted on going directly to the police. A critical security lapse was also uncovered: the ICU, a highly sensitive area, had no CCTV cameras, as Hindi newspaper Dainik Bhaskar reported

The hospital guard admitted that while shifts change and staff are present, there are no cameras. Police investigation revealed that Gathala, originally posted elsewhere, was temporarily stationed in Alwar on a “diversion.” Police have registered a case and are investigating the matter, taking statements from both the hospital administration and the victim.

State Congress leaders and LoP criticised BJP-ruled state government

Following these alarming incidents, former Chief Minister and prominent Congress leader Ashok Gehlot sharply criticised the BJP-ruled state government.

He took to his social media handle, X, to express his dismay, stating, “During the tenure of the Congress government, the health model of Rajasthan became a topic of discussion in the country and the world, but the BJP government has ruined it. The incidents of rape of a female patient in the ICU of a hospital in Alwar and the incidents of misbehaviour and assault by a doctor on a Dalit Congress leader in a government hospital in Pali are examples of this. The people of the state are regretting that more than half of the tenure of such an inefficient government is still left. How bad will be the condition of the state in this time.”

कांग्रेस सरकार के कार्यकाल में राजस्थान का हेल्थ मॉडल देश-दुनिया में चर्चा का विषय बना था परन्तु भाजपा सरकार ने इसे बर्बाद कर दिया है।

अलवर में अस्पताल के आईसीयू में महिला रोगी से रेप की घटना तथा पाली के सरकारी अस्पताल में कांग्रेस की दलित नेता के साथ डॉक्टर द्वारा बदसलूकी एवं…

— Ashok Gehlot (@ashokgehlot51) June 7, 2025

Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee President Govind Singh Dotasra also targeted the government, posting on social media that “the entire Rajasthan is ashamed by the atrocity committed by the nursing staff against a woman admitted in the ICU of a medical college in Alwar. This incident, which crosses all limits of barbarism, is a blot on humanity.”

He urged the Chief Minister to “wake up from deep sleep and see that every day in the state, innocent little girls are being raped, and the dignity of women is being torn apart. Under your misgovernance, cases of atrocities against minors have increased by over 18% from 2023 till now. It is shameful that everyone from ministers to the Chief Minister is intoxicated with power. There is no such thing as women’s safety, sensitivity, or good governance left. The situation is getting worse, but there is no one to see or listen.”

अलवर में मेडिकल कॉलेज के ICU में भर्ती महिला के साथ नर्सिंग स्टाफ द्वारा की गई दरिंदगी से पूरा राजस्थान शर्मसार है। हैवानियत की सारी हदें पार करने वाली यह घटना मानवता पर कलंक है।

मुख्यमंत्री जी, गहरी नींद से जागिए और देखिए प्रदेश में हर दिन छोटी-छोटी मासूम बच्चियों से बलात्कार… pic.twitter.com/y9hZoyPJYG

— Govind Singh Dotasra (@GovindDotasra) June 7, 2025

Adding his voice to the growing condemnation, Leader of Opposition Tikaram Juli took to X (formerly Twitter) to express his outrage. He wrote that “the heinous incident of rape of a victim woman by nursing staff in the ICU of ESIC Medical College in Alwar has shaken the entire state.”

हाल-ए-राजस्थान | अस्पताल में महिला से दरिंदगी | अलवर में मानवता शर्मसार

अलवर के ESIC मेडिकल कॉलेज की ICU में भर्ती एक पीड़ित महिला के साथ नर्सिंग स्टाफ द्वारा बलात्कार जैसी घिनौनी घटना ने पूरे प्रदेश को झकझोर कर रख दिया है।

यह प्रदेश की शासन व्यवस्था की विफलता है, जहां पीड़िता…

— Tika Ram Jully (@TikaRamJullyINC) June 6, 2025

Governance failure: safety compromised in sanctuaries

Juli further asserted that this incident signifies “a failure of the state’s governance system, where the victim is unsafe even in a place considered most secure.” He emphasised that “such an inhuman act occurring to a woman in a hospital’s ICU is not just an attack on a single woman, but an assault on the soul of the entire society.”

#WATCH | Alwar, Rajasthan: On alleged rape incident in ESIC Medical College, LoP Tikaram Jully says, “This proves that cases like rape under the rule of Bhartiya Janata Party are also suppressed. They remain unresolved, and if any grievant reaches out to the higher authorities… pic.twitter.com/IdmXwGOp7l

— ANI MP/CG/Rajasthan (@ANI_MP_CG_RJ) June 7, 2025

Bikaner: two minor girls raped by self-proclaimed temple priest, govt demolished illegal encroachments of accused

On June 3, 2025, a shocking incident reported in Bikaner district where two minor girls, aged eight and nine, were sexually assaulted by a self-proclaimed temple priest. The girls had visited a temple near their grandparents’ house when the accused, later identified as Shri Bhagwan, lured them with Prasad and promises of new sandals before committing the heinous act. Upon their return, the terrified girls revealed the ordeal to their family, disclosing how the perpetrator had threatened them with a fodder-cutting sickle, warning them of dire consequences if they spoke out.

Accused’s criminal history and demolition of illegal encroachments

The investigation quickly unearthed the shocking antecedents of the 50-year-old accused, Shri Bhagwan. It was discovered that he was a convicted murderer, having served a 20-year prison sentence for the 1993 murder of five people during a robbery in Bidasar. Despite being sentenced to death by lower courts, his sentence was commuted to 20 years by the Supreme Court, leading to his release in 2013, as reported Dainik Bhaskar

Following his recent arrest for the rape incident, authorities moved swiftly to demolish his illegal ashram in Surjansar village. This structure, built on government land, also housed a temple where he reportedly practiced tantric rituals.

Illegal activities and reclamation of land

The demolition drive, led by Sub-Divisional Officer and Tehsildar of area, revealed further illegalities. Opium and cannabis plants were discovered on the premises, indicating cultivation of narcotics. Additionally, Shri Bhagwan was found to be involved in illegal water siphoning and electricity theft. The operation successfully reclaimed approximately 50 bigha of encroached pasture land, returning it to the Gram Panchayat, as reported

The accused, who had misled villagers under the guise of spiritual healing, was also found to be in possession of weapons, highlighting the extent of his criminal enterprise.

Tonk: minor Dalit girl found after sexual assault

Another case of gang rape has surfaced from a village in the Pachewar police station area of Tonk district, Rajasthan. After the brutal assault, the perpetrators allegedly tied the minor Dalit girl’s hands and feet and abandoned her by the roadside. The victim was discovered unconscious on the night of February 28, prompting a police investigation, as NDTV Rajasthan reported

Authorities have since registered a case under the POCSO Act against four young men. It’s alleged that a neighbouring woman assisted the accused in their heinous crime. Police sources indicate that one of the suspects is from the victim’s village, while the other three reside in Kurad village.

FIR registered against four accused

Malpura DSP Ashish Prajapat confirmed that the victim provided a named complaint against four individuals, also accusing a neighbouring woman of aiding them. The police are actively investigating the matter. According to the victim’s statement to the police, around midnight on February 28, as she stepped out of her house for a short while, three or four individuals abducted her after covering her mouth.

The accused then took her to a shed behind a neighbour’s house where the gang rape occurred. When the minor screamed for help, the neighbouring woman allegedly came out but ignored her pleas and went back inside, emboldening the attackers, as reported

They subsequently tied the girl’s hands, feet, and mouth before leaving her near her home. Police have taken cognizance of the case and initiated investigation.

Barmer: a 31-year-old woman allegedly end her life by suicide after being blackmailed with rape threats and obscene videos

A distressing incident has come to light in Barmer’s Girab police station area, where a 31-year-old woman, a mother of three, tragically ended her life by suicide on June 10, 2025. The woman was found hanged at her home, and initial reports suggest she was driven to this extreme step after allegedly being blackmailed with threats of rape and the circulation of obscene videos.

According to police, the woman was reportedly lured, raped, and filmed by a man from her village, identified as Sumar Khan (name changed). He allegedly continued to exploit and threaten her, with the latest pressure on Tuesday causing her immense distress. The woman’s uncle has since filed a formal complaint against the accused. While the family asserts that the husband had reported the matter to the police in September 2024, claiming no action was taken, police officials state they have no record of such a report. A thorough investigation into the matter is now underway, and the woman’s body has been sent for post-mortem, as per a report in the Times of India.

NCW demands immediate action, takes suo moto cognizance

The National Commission for Women (NCW) has taken suo moto cognizance of this grave Barmer suicide case. On Monday, the NCW chairperson, Vijaya Rahatkar, took to X (formerly Twitter) to announce that she has written to the Rajasthan Director General of Police, urging immediate intervention and a swift inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death.

The National Commission for Women has taken Suo Moto cognizance of a deeply disturbing case from Barmer, Rajasthan, where a 31-year-old woman allegedly died by suicide after being blackmailed with rape threats and obscene videos.

Hon’ble Chairperson Smt. Vijaya Rahatkar has…

— NCW (@NCWIndia) June 16, 2025

Jaipur: 21-year-old woman gang-raped in Sanganer

This incident, occurring in March, adds to the disturbing pattern of such crimes. On the evening of Holi (March 14) in Jaipur’s Sanganer area, a 21-year-old married woman was allegedly gang-raped in a secluded farmland. The victim, who had recently moved to Jaipur, had reportedly left her home after a domestic dispute. She was accosted by two youths on a motorcycle who forcibly dragged her into a field and gang-raped her. A third person, who arrived later, fled, as reported

As per the Times of India, the survivor promptly lodged an FIR under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Sections 70 (gang rape) and 126 (wrongful restraint) at Sanganer Sadar police station. Medical examinations confirmed injuries. Police swiftly arrested Puran Yadav (22) and Himanshu Choudhary (19), and a 17-year-old boy was also detained. The investigation is ongoing.

Moreover, Rajasthan is facing an escalating crisis of gender-based violence, making women’s safety a critical concern. Recent months have revealed a chilling pattern of rapes across the state, defying belief. From an unimaginable assault on a patient inside an Alwar ICU to minor girls targeted in Bikaner and Tonk, and a tragic suicide in Barmer linked to blackmail, the scale of the problem is alarming. Even Jaipur has witnessed multiple incidents, including a gang rape.

These pervasive crimes, occurring in seemingly secure places like hospitals and homes, highlight a profound societal and governance failure, demanding immediate and decisive action to protect women and ensure safe public spaces.

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