Can we get swift justice too, Dalits ask after Kopardi rape death sentence
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Can we get swift justice too, Dalits ask after Kopardi rape death sentence

3 Dalits awarded capital punishment for rape and murder of Maratha girl last year, but Dalits say justice is rarely served if victim is from a lower caste.

   
Maratha Kranti Morcha activists paying tribute to victim of Kopardi incident,

Maratha Kranti Morcha activists paying tribute to victim of Kopardi incident, in Mumbai. Photo by Kunal Patil/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

3 Dalits awarded capital punishment for rape and murder of Maratha girl last year, but Dalits say justice is rarely served if victim is from a lower caste.

Mumbai: Last year, the rape and brutal murder of a 15-year-old girl belonging to a Maratha family in Kopardi village of Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district triggered a wave of Maratha protests in the state. This year, a lower court has swiftly awarded capital punishment to three convicts from the Mahar caste of Dalits.

Although Dalits have welcomed the stringent punishment and quick delivery of justice in the Kopardi case, they see it with a subscript – the same justice is rarely served when the tables turn and the victim is from a Dalit background, like in the case of the Khairlanji massacre, or even the alleged honour killing of a Dalit youth, Nitin Aage, in 2014.

“The judgment in the Kopardi case is extremely fair,” said advocate Keval Uke, general secretary of the National Dalit Movement for Justice. “But why is the same yardstick for justice not applied in other cases? Unfortunately, we are still a caste-driven country, where the delivery of justice has several hurdles for the lower strata.”

Act makes no difference

Uke complained about the infrequent use of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in the state, resulting in crimes against members of the Dalit community often going unrecorded, with police machinery and political forces allegedly favouring the accused. The law specifies strict penalties, provides for externment of those likely to commit offences, and calls for special courts for speedy trials.

Latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau, shows there were 1,750 cases of atrocities against the Scheduled Castes and 443 against Scheduled Tribes recorded in Maharashtra in 2016.

The law was not used even in Khairlanji 11 years ago, when a group of caste Hindus paraded a Dalit family naked in the village, sexually abused them, and hacked them to death. A lower court ruled out the caste angle while giving a death sentence to the accused, which the Bombay High Court later commuted to life. An appeal is pending in the Supreme Court.

Incidentally, one of the main demands of the Maratha community, which comprises about 33 per cent of the state’s population, in its silent protests, was a review and amendment of the act, saying it is often misused. The protests, which gathered steam after the Kopardi rape and murder, were primarily to demand quotas for the Maratha community in government jobs and education, and put immense pressure on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in the state.

To pacify the Marathas, the state government fast-tracked the Kopardi investigation and trial, and deputed noted criminal lawyer Ujjwal Nikam as the special public prosecutor.

The Kharda case

Raju Aage, father of Nitin Aage, a 17-year-old Dalit boy who was allegedly killed and hung from a tree, said he wishes the state government had paid the same attention to the case of his son.

Nitin, from Ahmednagar’s Kharda village, was allegedly killed in 2014 on the suspicion of having a relationship with a girl from the Maratha community. The Ahmednagar district court acquitted all nine accused for lack of evidence, as most witnesses turned hostile.

“A number of witnesses were employees of government institutions, and so, I was confident of getting justice. But they were swayed and turned hostile,” said Raju, a daily wage labourer who has a daughter in class 12, and a two-and-a-half-year-old son.

“I expected that the government will give us a good lawyer, and pay attention to the case, just like for Kopardi. I even requested for a special public prosecutor. I am going to appeal against the lower court’s order, but I have one question for the government now. If the accused were let off, who killed my son?” he asked.

Ashok Tangade, a social activist from Beed, also sees caste as the difference between the Kopardi and Kharda cases. “Both cases were in the same district, same court. The only difference was the caste of the accused and the gender of the victim. The government did not use the same mechanism to deliver justice at both places,” Tangade said.

“There is anger bottling up within the Dalit community. For now, people are venting out on social media, but if this continues, one doesn’t know in what manner it might spill.”

Maharashtra’s social justice minister Rajkumar Badole agrees that “the concerns are genuine”.

“The atrocities act makes provision for a special counsel, a special court. As social justice minister, my stand is that we will try to extend all aid possible to victims as per law,” Badole told ThePrint.

“In the case of Nitin Aage’s killing, the legal procedure is still not over. There is scope to appeal and we will help the family in all possible ways.”