The youth had hanged himself to death when his elder sister had gone out for a day leaving him alone at the rented house they both were sharing in Haryana’s Hisar city.

A written note by the deceased has reportedly been found from the premise and police have registered a case of abetment to suicide against five people hailing from the native village of the deceased. All the accused, save one, belonged to the dominant Jat community.

The deceased had been living with his sister in the city, away from his rest of the family members who live 30 km away in village Sayarwah, since he registered a case of sexual abuse against Joginder alias Maman of his village in September last year.

The deceased’s family alleges that after Joginder’s arrest, they felt threatened by his family and relatives to make “compromise” in the case.

“The victim belonged to the backward Regar caste. His family migrated to this village two-three decades ago from Rajasthan which makes their status even lower than the normal Dalit castes of the village. Only two Regar families live in the village on the outskirts of the village,” says Rajat Kalsan, Dalit rights activist and the victim’s lawyer in the case.

Kalsan says that the accused took the young man with him on the pretext of giving him some work in the field but midway he forced himself upon him and sexually assaulted him.

When the victim’s sister spotted her brother in a painful condition she took him to the police station where an FIR was registered and he was medically examined.

Kalsan says that after the registration of the FIR, influential people of the village started pressurizing the family to withdraw the case, but the family didn’t back off.

The elder brother of the deceased says that he was even offered Rs 15-20,000 from the accused’s family to take back the case.

Seeing the pressure mounting the brother-sister duo left the village for Hisar and started living in a rented house.

Deceased’s sister says that her brother was too docile to speak up against his perpetrators openly but claims he had confided in her his fears of the consequences of confronting them.

“He told me that he had been sexually abused regularly by a bunch of village men for more than a year. And that the perpetrators used to threaten him that they would harm me (the sister) if he didn’t comply with their demands,” says the woman in her early twenties.

She adds that her brother was particularly worried about a “video” which his perpetrators had claimed to have made of him in “objectionable condition” with the perpetrators, which they constantly reminded him of making it viral if he didn’t agree with their demands.

She says that although the accused had not made any direct contact with her brother since they shifted to Hisar late last year, the fear of the video going viral was always at the back of her brother’s mind.

“He had to testify in court against Joginder in January next year. And he was very worried about it,” says the deceased’s elder brother.

Police have arrested Joginder but the family of the deceased’s says that all the culprits should be arrested, as they are equally responsible for their son’s death.

Kalsan says that police have acted swiftly in arresting Joginder but the chances of the arrest of other accused look bleak as they all, save one, belong to one community.

“Police think that arresting a bunch of men of Jat community from a single village could create a law and order situation hence they are treading cautiously at the moment,” he says.

Kalsan calls for the investigating authorities to do scientific investigation in the case by examining the data of the mobile phones of the accused.

“They might have deleted the alleged video by now. So the police should deploy scientific technology to check deleted video files from the accused’s mobile phones,” he adds.

Courtesy: twocircles.net

The post Fear of “objectionable video” going viral led Dalit youth to commit suicide, says family appeared first on SabrangIndia.

However, for Dalits of Bhagana, democracy has already lost in its quest to provide them with their right to vote.

Scared of being attacked by the dominant members of their village, around 500 Dalit voters of Haryana’s Bhagana village skipped casting their votes on the Assembly elections on Monday.

These voters have been living outside their village since 2012 when following a land dispute between the Dalits and the dominant caste members of their village, the former were socially boycotted by the upper-castes resulting in the exodus of 138 Dalit families from the village.

Despite the long passage of time, the Dalits say, that the animosity between them and some of the upper-caste people of their village hasn’t subsided, particularly because of the insistence of the protesters to demand prosecution of the people who had made them leave the village.

Given the circumstances, Satish Kajla, who has been leading the protest movement since it started in 2012, had requested the administration to shift some of the polling booths in the village near the Dalit homes. The demand, however, was not met.

“In the last Lok Sabha elections also, I had demanded that the place be declared as extremely sensitive and requested that the polling booths be made near the Dalit Basti. The administration declared the place extremely sensitive but didn’t accept our second demand,” said Satish Kajla.

Kajla said that this time he wrote to the District Election Officer and Central Election Commission about the fear of Dalit voters in casting their ballots in polling booths located near the residences of upper-caste people of Bhagana. But his demand was again turned down.

“They didn’t even declare the village as extremely sensitive like in the last Lok Sabha election,” claimed Kajla.
 
If a polling booth is declared sensitive or extremely sensitive, then additional security personnel must be deployed at the booths. 
However, Kajla said that problem is not just at the polling booths only.

“If the booths are located at the other corner of the village, then we have to walk through the rows of houses of the same people who had persecuted us earlier. They still don’t let any opportunity slip by to hurl abuse and threaten us. Hence it’s important that the polling booths should be made near our houses,” Kajla added.

With a voter population of around 4,000, Bhagana has approximately 1,200 Dalit votes, out of which about 500 live outside of the village.

The Dalits who live outside Bhagana remain in contact with those Dalits who live in the village. However, physical contact rarely takes place due to the tense situation in their village.

Jagdish Kajla, a youth from Bhagana who now lives in Hisar, says that even fulfilling their religious and cultural customs is difficult for them as the village upper-castes don’t leave any opportunity to humiliate them.

“In our tradition when a person dies, people donate some firewood from each household of the community for the cremation. However in Bhagana, when we try to do that, the village upper-castes don’t let us collect wood from village land. So the enmity is still there,” Jagdish said.

Dalit rights activist Rajat Kalsan described the government decision to not install separate booths for the Dalits of Bhagana as ‘prejudiced’.

“Right to vote is a constitutional right of every citizen. The government can make a special arrangement for security forces to be deployed in difficult places to help people cast their votes. But the fact that it ignored a similar demand of a section of the population with genuine reasons explains either the government thinks that they (Dalits) will not vote for them or perhaps just don’t care about them,” said Kalsan.

Kalsan said that there was a need to hear the fears of the marginal community of the village.

 “In a place like Bhagana which has witnessed one of the most heinous caste atrocities in the country’s history, the administration should have heard the Dalits and tried to ameliorate their grievances. Their fears can’t just be removed by the bureaucratic thought process,” Kalsan added.

Courtesy: Two Circle

The post Why hundreds of Dalits were unable to vote in Bhagana, Haryana appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Mewati youths protest against cow-vigilantism

Meos are a community of Muslims who reside in the Mewat region comprising Haryana’s Nuh district ; some parts of Faridabad; Rajasthan’s Alwar and Bharatpur districts, and one administrative division of Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura district.

Meos are concentrated in Nuh and around 80% of the district’s one million people belong to the community.

The region came to public attention in 2017 when a dairy farmer of Nuh’s Jaisinghpur village, Pehlu Khan, 55, was lynched by a mob of cow-vigilantes in neighboring Rajasthan’s Behror city. Following the incident, two more men from the region lost their lives in separate incidents of mob violence while many more received injuries.

Meos have traditionally been cattle-breeders and some villagers profess to having more than 50 cows with them a few years ago.
“The topography of the area with hillocks and grazing land in the foothills, allow villagers to keep cattle in large numbers,” says Ramzan Chaudhary, president of the All India Mewati Samaj, an organization of Meos around the country.

Meos trace their history to seventh century and claim themselves to be the descendant of Hindu Rajput rulers of the region.
“Despite being Muslim, lots of our cultural mores are similar to those of Hindus like the belief in gotras, castes, etc. Until few decades ago we used to celebrate all the major Hindu festivals also,” says Saleem Khan, a social activist from Mudhee village of the district.

Mob-lynching victim Pehlu Khan’s son Irshad at his house with his younger brother and mother in Jaisinghpur village, Nuh

Claiming to have a “special” and “emotional” relationship with cows, some Meos say that they would not kill it for food however acknowledge at the same time that some members of the community do it.

“Ever since the matter has taken a communal tone, village panchayats and religious leaders (maulvis) have declared a ban on eating beef. We have even warned the panchayat heads that they would be punished if a resident of their village was found selling or eating beef,” says Chaudhary.

Plagued with poor infrastructure, lack of water and high rate of illiteracy, Nuh came in at the bottom of a list of 101 most backward districts of the country released by the Indian government’s policy think tank, Niti Ayog last year.

The attacks have increased the problems of the region by creating a fear psychosis among the people resulting in their reluctance to buy cows.  This has hit the dairy-business of the region hard.

“People are scared to bring cows now. Since buffaloes are very expensive, very few could afford them which have adversely affected the profit margin,” says Mohammad Qayyum, a dairy-owner in Jaisinghpur village.

Reselling of old and unproductive cows have also become difficult as the stringent implementation of Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan Act, 2015, which prohibits cow slaughter, consumption, sale and storage of beef, has made cows pariah among villagers.

Pehlu Khan’s eldest son Irshad,28 years, who is also one of the victims of the assault, says that he had to search for another source of income after the incident as keeping cows became unfeasible for Muslims. A father of three, Irshad co-drives a truck now, and remains out of town for months. Because of the continuing case in an Alwar court however he has to cancel his trip frequently causing him monetary losses.

Nuh is surrounded by Hindu-majority regions of Haryana and Rajasthan. With the arrival of BJP in Centre, the residents of the district say that a concerted effort has been made to “isolate” and “attack” the practices and way of life of the Meos.

“If a Meo Muslim has to bring a cow for milk, he has to come through the neighboring districts where the right-wing groups spot them and launch attacks,” says Saleem Khan.

Azad Khan, a farmer leader of the region says that Muslim farmers are scared to even take their cows for mating with bulls (a practice in villages) few kilometers from their houses for fear of being seen as moving them for slaughter.

“Cow’s rope in the hands of a Muslim is enough for some people to accuse him of cow-smuggling,” says Khan.

Moeen Khan acknowledges that despite the increased scrutiny around cows some cattle-thieves might still be operative in the area who would pick stray cattle, mostly.

He however further adds that members of Hindu communities are also involved in this act as they are the ones who inform the criminals about the location of the cattle in lieu of money.

“A minuscule number of people, belonging to both the communities, are involved in this act. They are criminals and should be treated just like that only. Identifying them with their religion would be wrong,” says Khan.

He adds that the role of police is crucial in the illegal business of cow-smuggling.

“Without the involvement and approval of police personnel it’s next to impossible to transport cows illegally,” Khan claims.

Chaudhary, who is also a lawyer, says in a district with poverty and rampant unemployment, some members of the community are indeed involved in the “illegal beef-business”.

Herd of stray cows in Nuh, Haryana

“A cow’s hide sells for Rs. 5,000-6,000 while its meat would fetch around Rs 15,000-20,000 depending upon the animal’s weight. An underground network of cow-sellers, transporters, and butchers is still operative in the area although in small pockets,” Chaudhary says.
He further alleges that the business is so lucrative that police, particularly the personnel of Crime Investigation Agency (CIA), are hands in gloves with the members of the butcher community.

“Police personnel and the Quereshis (a community mostly of butchers) enjoy personal relationships. I have heard of a wedding of a Hindu police officer’s daughter in the area where the Quereshis had gifted two lakh rupees to the bride,” says Chaudhary.

The BJP at the centre and the state, Moeen Khan asserts, has exploited the fault lines among the two communities (Hindu and Muslim) by letting these self-made groups of so-called “go-rakshaks” act on their prejudices by targeting Muslims in the name of religion.

“I would say if BJP has not sanctioned such attacks then certainly they have also not condemned and prevented them. The ground-level workers of these loosely-controlled vigilantes’ groups feel the urge to impress upon their higher leadership by doing some acts in the name of honoring their religion. They think attacking a Muslim galvanizes the community,” says Khan.

“The inability and unwillingness of the government to prevent and punish these attackers is where its guilt lies,” he adds.

Damage to Biryani business

The fallout of the attacks is being felt in other businesses also.

Chaudhary recalls a survey he had helped coordinate for Aman Biradari, a social justice initiative, in 2017 where around 10,000 biryani-stall owners were interviewed.

“There were thousands of road-side eateries along the Sohna-Alwar road which used to sell buffalo -meat biryani. After the Pehlu Khan Incident, police raids on the shops started to take place regularly forcing most of them to shut their business,” says Chaudhary.

Police would confiscate meat items and send them for examination on suspicion of beef.

Chaudhary says that the real reason of the raids was to harass the Muslim population as no beef sample had ever been found in those raids.
“The repercussions of the overzealousness of the police were borne by the poor eatery-owners and consumers who largely belonged to the truck-drivers community,” Chaudhary adds.

Thousands of eateries were closed as the result of daily harassment by the police.

“Buffalo meat is cheaper than chicken and much cheaper than mutton. A poor truck driver or laborer could easily afford a plate of biryani. The damage to the business has hit both the poor sellers and consumers,” Chaudhary says.

Emerging out of the turbulent last five years, voters of Nuh yearn for a change from the previous times and for a future when religion is not the primary identifying factors for them.

“I realized that I am a Muslim only in 2014. Before that I was a proud Mewati. I would again like to go back to our old times when religions didn’t matter much,” says Haroon Khan of Mewat Vikas Sabha.

Courtesy: Two Circle

The post Reeling under cow-politics, Mewati villagers yearn for change appeared first on SabrangIndia.

With Lok Sabha elections approaching, every political party is trying to show that it cares for the marginalised communities and if voted to power, it will do all that is possible to address their concerns. However, for Dalits of Bhagana village in Haryana’s Hisar district, it seems justice will remain elusive no matter who comes to power. They have been camping outside the district secretariat for the last eight years in protest against their social boycott by the dominant Jats of their village over a land dispute but to no avail.

Dalits of Bhagana village at the protesting site in Hisar (Photo: Inder Bisht)
 

The boycott which resulted in the exodus of 138 Dalits families from Bhagana hasn’t seen a single prosecution till date despite several complaints and a writ-petition being filed by the victims in the Haryana High Court.

Victims’ lawyer Balwant Singh Bodia says that the state government had falsely claimed in an affidavit that all the victims have been rehabilitated to which they have filed a counter-affidavit in the court.
 

Dalits of Bhagana village at the protesting site in Hisar(Photo: Inder Bisht)
 

No relief package or any concrete steps towards the rehabilitation of the affected families have been taken by the administration till date.
In  December 2012, the administration managed to persuade the protesting families to go back to the village by giving them compensation of around Rs 67,000, and an assurance of their safety.

Out of the 138 families, 51 eventually did agree to return to the village. However, later, to the shock of the families, the compensatory amount turned out to be a loan.

“I still receive notices from the State Bank of India to pay my instalments for the cattle loan which the district collector had fraudulently imposed on me claiming it as a part of relief amount. I owe more than a lakh rupee to the bank now,” says Virender, a Dalit from Bhagana who had agreed to return. Many of the 51 families eventually again relocated to different parts of the state after feeling disillusioned by the promises made by the administration. along with the persistent hostile environment towards them in the village.
 

The playground on the disputed land in Bhagana village (Photo: Inder Bisht)
 

In 2014, Bhagana witnessed a second exodus of the Dhanak (a backward caste) community members when four minor girls of their community were allegedly gang-raped by the members of the Jat community.
 

About 80-odd families of the community left the village fearing for their lives and the biased attitude of the administration in favour of the Jats.
 

Five members of the Jat community were eventually arrested in the case but later got released.
 

The National Commission for Scheduled Caste (NCSC) has been monitoring the matter for the last few years, and some members of the commission have visited the village as part of their probe.

Last year, the NCSC had asked the Haryana chief secretary, director general of police (DGP) and Hisar deputy commissioner (DC) to appear before the chairman for a hearing in connection with the issue.

Satish Kajla, 39, who has been leading the protest, says that the NCSC chairman Ram Shankar Katheria had told him that the uprooted families would be relocated near Hisar. However, on the matter of prosecuting the 30-odd village members who had ordered their social boycott, Kajla says, Katheria was dismissive.
 

A Dalit protester from Bhagana continuing with his occupation at the protesting site in Hisar (Photo: Inder Bisht)
 

“He told me in private that if they were to take action against the villagers, who are jats, law and order situation in the area would suffer,” says Kajla.
 

A special investigation team was constituted after the meeting to investigate the matter, says Kajla, but there is no information about its progress.
 

“I had filed an RTI to find out any update on the SIT findings but didn’t get any response. I am clueless at the moment where the investigation is heading towards,” says a dejected Kajla.
 

The issue which had started with a dispute over the distribution of village shamilat (common) land in 2011 witnessed the Jats-led village panchayat later imposing social-boycott of the protesting Dalits resulting in the exodus of 138 Dalit families from the village.
 

The uprooted families camped outside Hisar’s mini secretariat and started protesting against the injustice and atrocities they were subjected to by the members of the dominant caste of their village.
 

After the gang-rape incident in 2014, the protesting families undertook a 170 km walk to Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to highlight their plight in front of the country’s media and politicians.

“I met Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, who asked me to meet the then Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda,” says Kajla.
 

In the meeting with Hooda, Kajla claims, the then chief minister reprimanded him for raking up an “unnecessary issue”.
 

Dalits of Bhagana village at the protesting site in Hisar (Photo: Inder Bisht)
 

The present village sarpanch Shakti Singh says that he has done his best to persuade the Dalits to return to the village but, he adds, that the “few” protesting people are keeping the issue alive for “personal gains”. “They don’t want to work but live off the compensation money. We agreed to all their demands and are willing to give them plots too,” says Shakti Singh.

The Dalits of Bhagana this correspondent spoke to said that the plots are far away from their present residences in the village and hence are of no use to them.

Despite the claims of the sarpanch that situation has normalised in Bhagana and that no social boycott of Dalits is practised anymore, few of the Dalits who had returned to the village say that the situation is not normal, particularly for the Dalits who are still protesting against the previous sarpanch and panchayat members.

Vimla Devi, 55, whose husband had expired last year says that when she along with her family returned to Bhagana after six years and went to the sarpanch for work under NREGA scheme, the sarpanch, she said, told her that since she was still part of the protest at Hisar secretariat she can’t get work.

The dispute had arisen in 2012 after the village panchayat had excommunicated some Dalits of the village for objecting to the distribution of 280 acres of the village (common) land by the panchayat members. “The village head along with the panchayat members had drawn up a scheme to divide and distribute the common land among the villagers. According to the scheme, the upper castes were to get around 1,000 square yards each while the Dalit households were getting around 100 square yards each,” says Satish Kajla.

The plan was allegedly in response to a government scheme ‘Mahatma Gandhi Malin Basti Yojana’ under which 100 square yards of a plot was to be given to every BPL (below poverty line) family.
 

Their abandoned houses in Bhagana village (Photo: Inder Bisht)
 

However, Kajla alleges that the scheme was a ruse, and the panchayat didn’t have the intention to distribute the land to the Dalits.

“They knew that if the panchayat had directly asked the villagers to vacate the common land then there would have been a protest. So they named a scheme and asked people to deposit the money for registration in a bid to look it authentic,” says Kajla.

Out of 280 acres of common land in Bhagana, 230 is non-cultivable which is used for various purposes like playground, cremation, pond, dumping garbage and cattle dung.

The common village land was distributed in proportion to the land that the residents already owned. This meant that the Dalit families, which were mostly landless, ended up with less than 100 square yards each. They were also asked to deposit Rs 1,000 as registration fee.
“The dominant caste group in the village, most of its members belonging to one family, managed to corner most of the redistributed land,” says Kajla.

Next, the panchayat members started felling trees from the common land and sold the timber off in the market.

The actual flashpoint between the Jat-dominated panchayat and Dalits occurred when the panchayat members uprooted poles and broke off seating arrangement at a three-acre playground where the youths of the village used to play.

“We used to play on the ground daily. It was special for us because some of us had managed to clear physical round of the recruitment process because of continuous training on the ground. We were in no mood to let it go,” says Jagdish Kajla, another Dalit member of Bhagana village.

When the Dalits made a representation to the government, the Jats were angry and allegedly ordered a social and economic boycott of them.
 

Their abandoned houses in Bhagana village (Photo: Inder Bisht)
 

“The shopkeeper in the village was told not to sell to us; the common village pond was denied to our buffaloes. No one would talk to us. We were not allowed to use barber shop, village cremation ground and temples. Even using transport to travel outside of the village was not allowed to us,” recalls Satish.
 

“No jat would employ us in his field. The village head had stopped giving us work under NREGA scheme also,” says Satish.
Pushed to the wall the boycotted Dalits on May 21, 2012, left the village along with their cattle and camped at the premise of Hisar’s mini-secretariat. The protest has continued ever since.

Courtesy: Two Circle

The post Seven years and counting: No justice in sight for Dalits of Bhagana appeared first on SabrangIndia.

By Inder Bisht, TwoCircles.net

 

 

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