Silvester D'Souza

Daijiworld Media Network - Kundapur (SP)

Kundapur, Dec 6: Two groups of people connected with a dispute pertaining members of scheduled castes, who had come to the police station to settle a contentious issue, came to blows there. The incident happened on the night of Tuesday December 5. In this incident, two were injured, and both of them are undergoing treatment in the government hospital here.

On Tuesday, a camp to create legal awareness among dalits and also for distribution of facilities under various schemes had been organized in Kota gram panchayat. Some members of a dalit organization demanded for cancellation of the programme as panchayat devleopment officer and secretary were not present at the programme. Panchayat members said that this was a programme that had been scheduled in advance and that it cannot be postponed for such reasons, and started the programme. Advocate, T Manjunath Giliyar, who had been asked to convey information about law, also gave background of some of the laws. A dalit leader, Shyam, asked him to confine himself to only sections and desist from providing unnecessary information. As he frequently intervened and created problems in the programme, a verbal altercation ensued between Shyam and Manjunath. Some members of the organization then arrived at the venue of the meeting and raised a din. Nodal officer, Arun, intervened, brokered peace and saw that the programme was resumed.

Arati, Shyam, Vijay and others complained to Kota police station, alleging that president of the gram panchayat was laughing at them when commotion was on. They sought apology from her and threatened to file case under legal provisions relating to atrocities against dalits. Panchayat president, Vanita Sridhar Achar, panchayat members and some members of dalit organization led by T Manjunath visited the station and held talks. Thereafter, the panchayat president tendered apology publicly. Some dalit leaders resented this act, questioning the need for the panchayat president, who had not done anything wrong, to apologize. After verbal friction, they walked out of the station.

Then, one of the complainants, Arati, suddenly walked out of the station, attacked a dalit leader, held his collar and tried to rough him up. Angered by this development, a group launched counterattack on her. As chaos reigned supreme in the police station for some time, tension mounted. The police admitted injured Arati and another woman into the government hospital here.

Dalit Sangharsh Samiti expressed strong opposition to registration of false case under dalit atrocity provisions. It expressed anger at unnecessarily dragging the name of panchayat president in the case. Its leaders said that in the past too ten false dalit atrocity cases had been registered in Kota police station, and said that these developments had resulted in reverses for dalit movement in the region.