On Wednesday, 13 June, evening, a 15-year-old boy from Vithlapur Village near Viramgam (Ahmedabad District Rural), traveled to Becharaji village in Mehsana District for a haircut. He covered a distance of 20 kilometres because Dalits in Vithlapur are not allowed to get haircuts.
One of the men was a native of the victim’s village and identified him by his caste. According to Vanzara, the victim at first said he was from a lower caste, but then out of fear of getting thrashed, he said he was a Darbar (upper caste community).
The men started thrashing the Dalit minor and abused him with the choicest swear words in Gujarati, all the while mocking him saying – “You want to be a Darbar?”
After the incident transpired, members of the Darbar community put pressure on the boy and his family to not file a police complaint.
Local Dalit activist, Kirit Rathod, told The Quint, “I just exited the police station. The boy and his family are inside the police station along with the men accused of assaulting the boy for the last two hours.”
The State’s Social Welfare Department and the Collector of Mehsana paid Rs 50,000 as compensation to the minor Dalit boy. The police have also provided him with two constables who will protect him round the clock.
The four accused later fled from Becharaji after an FIR was filed. The names of the accused in the case are Bharatsinh Bhimsinh Darbar, Jaideep Banesang Darbar and Chehersinh Sunsang Solanki who are residents of Becharaji Mehsana. The fourth accused, Kuberbha Udaysinh Darbar, is a resident of Vithlapur in Ahmedabad Rural and was the one who identified the victim as a Dalit.
Director General of Police, Gujarat, Shivanand Jha told reporters on Saturday that 14 teams were created to arrest the accused as the gravity of the matter at hand is severe. Jaideep and Chehersinh were arrested on Saturday, 16 June. On Sunday, one of the teams arrested Kuberbha Darbar. Bharatsinh is still absconding.
(This story was updated on Monday, 18 June, with details from the press note issued by Gujarat’s DGP Shivanand Jha. It carries the names of the four accused, the arrests made so far and the compensation paid to the minor Dalit victim.)
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