SMS Help line to Address Violence Against Dalits and Adivasis in India
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Damodarpur village is situated under Rasulpur Tahasil and Kuakhia Police Station in Jajpur district. Abhiram Paramhansa High School is one prime educational institution in the village. It is established in 1990s in the name of the spiritual yogi Abhiram. Every year the annual function of Abhiram Paramhansa is celebrated in the school with much pump and ceremony. A big feast is organised during the celebration every year. For the function contributions are collected from each household. Every family take part in the function and those are entrusted with responsibilities, they perform that. There has not been any report of issues of caste based discrimination during the function. When looked into the depth, it is found that the responsibilities are divided as per castes and accessibility.
This year the function of the Yogi was organized in December and the feast was arranged on 30.12.2022. During the feast, some people taking meal asked for Dal to be served. Satya Priyabrata Mallik is a 20 year old young man studying in a nearby college. He belongs to Scheduled Caste (SC) ategory. Satya was present near the person who was asking for Dal. Satya rushed, carried the serving bucket with dal and proceeded towards that person. At that point, one upper caste person shouted at him, “How dare you touch the food stuff being a Pana (Caste of the victim)?” The dominant caste person followed up with more abuses and slapped him. Some more upper caste persons joined and roughed up the victim. One threatened to murder him. The dalit elders rescued Satya Priyabrata
from more atrocities.
In the next evening, Satya was summoned to the school campus. There 60/70 persons had gathered. Some teachers including the Head Master of the school, the president of the organizing committee were present. There, it is alleged that the victim was abused and forced to spit on the ground and rub his nose; he was terrorised, humiliated and subjugated and left to go back home with threatening, never to dare such steps in future.
Tapan Kumar Gochayat lives with his family in Dhumat village under Nikirei police station of Kedrapada block under Kendrapara district. He is a daily labourer and his son Manoj is an auto driver. His son Manoj takes few children in his auto to the Saraswti Shishu mandir located at Indipur. On his way to school every day, he meets a woman named Kuni Parida (Age-35, W/O- Babu Parida) and a love affair eveloped between them over the period of time. Overwhelmed by this incident, Manoj's father and mother got him married on 07.07.2022. Here it is revealed that Kuni Parida had physical and intimate relations with men other than Manoj. When Manoj got married, Kuni could not have any relationship with Manoj, As a result, Kuni and Kuni's other associates hatched a conspiracy. On 13.10.2022, Manoj went away from home on a motorcycle and since he did not return, the family searched for him for two days and then reported him missing in Nikrei police station on 15.10.2022. On 22.10.2022 and 28.10.2022, Tapan and others met Superintendent of Police, Kendrapara and informed about this incident.
After that, on 02.11.2022, Manoj’s shirt and skull were found lying in the Mahakalpada balighat (sand quarry). This was reported to Nikirei police station; he said that the place was not in area of Nikirei PS and asked him to report it to Bari-Ramchandrapur police station. It was informed in Bari police station and in the presence of police and magistrate; the skeleton, shirt and other items were sealed and sent for post-mortem. After that Kuni Parida, her husband and another accomplice were arrested and forwarded to ail custody. Police investigation is on.
The victim family lived in village Kandarpur of Athagarh Block in Kandarpur Gram Panchayat. Gandharba Samal aged 65 lived in the village with his three daughters and one son named Ganesh Samal. All the daughters are married, one of them is married in the same sahi where they live; name of, and her
husband is Bhaabgrahi Nayak. Ganesh, aged about 25 years was a daily labourer. Two persons, namely Niranjan Dalei and Gokulananda Sahu run a poultry farm and they used to call Ganesh for loading and unloading work in the poultry farm. In the village the dalits have a strong presence numerically with more than 100 household. It is alleged by the poultry farm owners that Ganesh was committing theft of chickens at different times.
On 4.8.22 at about 9 PM Ganesh was called and taken by the farm owners, Niranjan and Gokulanand to work in their poultry farm. But Ganesh did not return home till late night. His mother searched for Ganesh and went to the houses of the Farm owners, but neither could she trace Ganesh nor any of the Farm owners. The next day at 6 AM, his family members came to know that the victim was lying dead near Niranjan Dallei's poultry farm, with severe head injuries, cracks and other injuries, and blood oozing out from his body. People suspected that someone killed the victim and threw him there. On 05.08.2022, his family went to Athagarh police station and lodged an FIR.
Himanshu Behera is a resident of Baujung village under Balichandrapur police station. He is a truck driver, and used to drive trucks of different private truck owners. He used to drive Sudarshan Panda’s vehicle, who is a resident of Dakihnasasan village. Sudarshan, the owner, was paying him half of his
salary for a long time. There were arguments frequently between the two regarding the matter. Every time Himanshu talks about quitting his job over this half salary incident, Sudarshan abuses him with obscene language. After such an exchange of words, Himanshu left driving Sudarshan's truck and started driving a new owner's vehicle named Biswajit Samal, inhabitant of village: Mahipur, PS: Balichandrapur. Sudarshan got angry seeing new owner's truck delivering goods at the same place where his truck used to deliver by Himanshu. Suddenly on 04.08.2022 afternoon three accused persons namely, Sudarshan, Panchanan and Debasish, came on a bike, stopped the truck driven by Himanshu parked the bike in the front of the truck. They started shouting abusive language aspersing the caste name of Himanshu. They dragged him from the vehicle and brutally assaulted him with various weapons. They left Himanshu badly injured, bleeding and unconscious. Shortly after that Bishwajit Samal came and rescued him and took him to Dharamshala Hospital. From there the doctor sent him to Cuttack hospital and after staying there for 6-7 days he returned home and went to Dharamsala police station to lodge complaint. Initially the police did not register FIR as the accused were influential people. With great difficulty and much persuasion, his case was registered on 12.08.2022. As the accused belonged to the influential class, they asked for their case not to be register under SC/ST PoA act, but finally with the help of our efforts, this Act was invoked.