From: Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC <pmarc2008@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 12:39 PM
Subject: [PMARC] Dalits Media watch - News Updates 20.07.10
To: Dalits Media Watch <PMARC@dgroups.org>
Dalits Media Watch
News Updates 20.07.10
Mirchpur panchayat fails to resolve matter - The Tribune
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20100720/haryana.htm#3
MPs contest figures on manual scavengers - The Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/20/stories/2010072061690800.htm
Read the Riot Act, rein in khap panchayats: Rights Watch - The Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/20/stories/2010072062822000.htm
Act of revenge: Family of murder accused attacked - The Times of India
Govt. teacher gets two years' RI for thrashing dalit colleague - The Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/20/stories/2010072061320500.htm
Centre should sanction more funds for SC, ST population, says Shah - The Pioneer
Doomed by Caste Damned by Gender - Tehelka
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main46.asp?filename=Ne240710doomed.asp
Mirchpur panchayat fails to resolve matter
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20100720/haryana.htm#3
Tribune News Service
Hisar (Haryana): July 19
The seventh panchayat held at Mirchpur village to reconcile differences between Dalits and other communities has ended in a naught. The panchayat was held at the village's Balmiki chaupal.
All communities were represented. The Jat representatives underlined the need for restoring village bhaichara (camaraderie) and pleaded for a compromise. However, representatives of the Dalit community took strong objection to the bail petition filed by one of the accused in the High Court, alleging that the Dalits themselves had set their houses afire.
They also objected to the allegations levelled against Union Minister Kumari Selja who, they maintained, had no role in the episode.
They demanded that the Jat community hand over the accused named in the FIR to the police for trial. Amidst allegations and counter-allegations, the panchayat failed to come to any decision and ended abruptly.
Later, representatives of both communities said more such attempts would be made to resolve the dispute amicably.
The Hindu
MPs contest figures on manual scavengers
http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/20/stories/2010072061690800.htm
Smita Gupta
NEW DELHI: Contesting government figures, several MPs on Monday stressed that the number of manual scavengers still left in the country was much higher than what was furnished by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment — 1.17 lakh.
At a meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to the Ministry, they pointed out that this figure did not square with the much larger number of proposals received by the Ministry of Housing and Poverty Alleviation for conversion of dry latrines, according to sources on the panel. It was therefore imperative, the MPs said, that the Social Justice Ministry immediately conduct a survey to check the figures and vigorously work towards ending what the National Human Rights Commission recently termed "one of the worst violations of human rights." Monday's meeting comes in the wake of the Centre appointing an expert committee — to be jointly overseen by the Ministries of Social Justice and Labour — to abolish manual scavenging.
The committee — which has a representative each from the Ministries of Social Justice, Urban Development and Railways, and one from the Planning Commission — has been asked to draft a new law and submit its report by September 30.
At the meeting, Social Justice Minister Mukul Wasnik said that while all States and Union Territories had confirmed the rehabilitation of all eligible and willing beneficiaries under the Self-Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers (SRMS), his Ministry would continue to work with the States to identify any persons who might still need to be rehabilitated.
Under the SRMS, term loans up to Rs.5 lakh and micro financing up to Rs.25,000 are given for rehabilitation in alternative occupations. Mr. Wasnik said information about each identified beneficiary had been placed on the websites of the apex corporations, the State governments, State channelling agencies and the districts concerned to make it open to public scrutiny. Simultaneously, action was being initiated to undertake a 100 per cent internal audit of the work done under the SRMS by the State governments, and at least 25 per cent external audit through the State Commissions for Safai Karamcharis/SCs and other independent bodies.
Though the government introduced as far back as in 1993 the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act in 1993 — under which no person can be engaged in manual scavenging and construction of dry latrines is prohibited — the Centre missed three deadlines to abolish manual scavenging: December 2007, March 2009 and March 2010. The biggest defaulters are Meghalaya, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, U.P., Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and even Delhi.
The Hindu
Read the Riot Act, rein in khap panchayats: Rights Watch
http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/20/stories/2010072062822000.htm
Aarti Dhar
| Ensure impartial police probe without bowing to pressure, government urged |
NEW DELHI: "The Indian government should urgently investigate and prosecute those responsible for the recent spurt in reported 'honour' killings," Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Monday.
It should also strengthen laws against kinship-based, religion-based, and caste-based violence, and take appropriate action against local leaders who endorsed or tolerated such crimes.
Murders to protect family or community 'honour' had increased in recent months in Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, where unofficial village councils — khap panchayats — issued edicts condemning couples for marrying outside their caste or religion and condemned marriages within a kinship group ( gotra), considered incestuous even though there was no biological link. Some local politicians and officials were sympathetic to the councils' edicts, implicitly supporting the violence.
"Officials who fail to condemn village council edicts that end in murder are effectively endorsing murder," said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for the global body. "Politicians and police need to send these councils a strong message to stop issuing edicts on marriages."
There were no official figures for such killings as they often went unreported or were passed off as suicide or natural deaths by the family members involved. However, a recent independent study found that at least 900 such murders occurred every year in Haryana, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh alone. There were no estimates of other injuries, unlawful confinement, or forced marriages suffered by women and girls, or by couples, in the name of "honour."
The vigilant media had recently been reporting such cases, sometimes resulting in even more extreme responses by community leaders, the Human Rights Watch said.
"The authorities in these cases give little or no regard to the wishes and concerns of the women at risk," Ms. Ganguly said. "So the women are seldom able to pursue complaints or seek protection from those actually threatening their life and security."
The government should press ahead with strengthening its laws and make community leaders liable for punishment "if their edicts incite the so-called honour killings," Ms. Ganguly said.
However, legislative changes were only part of the solution, the Human Rights Watch said. The government should ensure that the police impartially investigated "honour" killings without bowing to political or other pressure from powerful local leaders.
The government should, through public campaigns and the media, promote the right of individuals of legally marriageable age to make their own choice without fear of violence or other abuse, the Human Rights Watch said. It should instruct the police to protect those in consensual relationships who feared family or community reprisals.
The Times of India
Act of revenge: Family of murder accused attacked
TNN, Jul 19, 2010, 10.37pm IST
RAJKOT (Guajarat): An attempt was made to burn alive the wife and two children of a dalit, who is in jail as an undertrial for murder, by setting their house on fire at Mota Mahuva village on the city's outskirts late on Sunday night. While the house was completely charred, the inmates sustained severe burns and have been shifted to hospital.
Usha Makwana, 45, was shifted to civil hospital by her neighbours. Usha accused seven persons in the FIR that was registered at Malaviyanagar police station, stating that her family was being harassed and atrocities were being meted out publicly on them for a piece of land at Khaaredi village.
Usha has named Hardik Shingala, Dinesh Ravji Shingala, Shailesh Bhikha, Kishan Parsana and two unidentified persons for the crime. She told police that she was sleeping in the passage area outside her house at Vankarvas area in Mota Mahuva with her son Umesh, 16 and daughter Anita, 18. At 2.30am, she woke up when she felt suffocated by smoke and saw the flames engulfing the outer part of the house. She managed to wake up her children and run inside the house.
Their shouts for help were heard by her neighbour, who called the firemen.
Malaviyanagar police rushed to the spot as the situation got tense after the incident. Police were posted as a precaution to prevent any spark off. According to investigation officer JN Ram, "Last year, in December, Mayu Shingala, village chief of Mota Mahuva, had been murdered. Usha's husband Devji Makwana is one of the accused and is at present in jail along with other co-accused. Shingala was murdered over a land dispute. Now, Usha has accused Hardik Shingala, Mayu's cousin of setting fire to her house for the same property."
Police have registered her complaint under various sections of Indian Penal Code which includes section 336, 147 , 148 , 149 and 3 (1) ,10 (2) of Atrocity Act. Police have begun raiding various places to arrest the accused.
The Hindu
Govt. teacher gets two years' RI for thrashing dalit colleague
http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/20/stories/2010072061320500.htm
Rewari (Haryana): A local court on Monday sentenced a Government school teacher to two years of rigorous imprisonment for using caste-related words and violent behaviour against a dalit teacher in the same school.
Additional Sessions Judge J R Chauhan sentenced Purshottam Sharma, a Hindi teacher of Tihara Government high school, to two years of rigorous imprisonment while holding him guilty of using caste-related words and violent behaviour against a Dalit teacher of the same school in November 2008. The Judge also imposed a fine of Rs.3,500 on the convict. - PTI
The Pioneer
Centre should sanction more funds for SC, ST population, says Shah
Staff Reporter | Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh):
Tribal Welfare Minister Kunwar Vijay Shah said that the Central Government should be urged to sanction more funds as per ratio of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes population in proportion to the population of the State.
He said that a proposal to this effect should be sent to the Central Government. At the same time proposal should be prepared for new big projects for the areas with more than one lakh population, medium projects for areas with more than 50,000 population and MADA packet for the small tribal villages which are not included in the tribal sub plan. Kunwar Vijay Shah was addressing the departmental advisory committee meeting held at the conference hall of Vidhan Sabha on Monday.
On this occasion, Minister of State for Tribal Welfare Harishankar Khatik, advisory committee members MLAs Bisahulal Singh, Ranjit Singh Gunwan and Nandani Maravi were also present.
The committee members invited attention of the Minister about delay in construction works by different departments under tribal sub-plan areas. Kunwar Vijay Shah said that MoU should be signed with the implementation agencies before starting construction works with the budget of department. He said that the MoU should contain the cost of works and the time limit for the same. In case the works are delayed and the cost escalated no additional amount should be given to the implementation agency from the department.
It was informed in the meeting that the works of electrification of tribal hamlets are not progressing as per expectations. The members suggested to getting the works done at Anuppur and Umaria investigated. The members also said that the police register case filed by the members of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes only after prima facie investigation. Due to this the victims are not getting justice in time. The departmental officers have been instructed to issue proper directives in this regard.
About receipt of complaints pertaining to preparing bogus caste certificate the Tribal Welfare Minister directed that the departmental officers should recommend for taking action against the guilty officers. The committee members reviewed the problems being faced in implementation of departmental projects and gave suggestions.
It was informed in the meeting that at present there are 26 big projects, 5 medium projects, 30 MADA packets and six small projects under tribal sub-plans.
Tehelka
Doomed by Caste Damned by Gender
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main46.asp?filename=Ne240710doomed.asp
Rape continues to be a weapon of oppression against Dalits in Uttar Pradesh, despite the state having a Chief Minister who is herself a woman and a Dalit
by SHOBHITA NAITHANI, photographs VIJAY PANDEY
BADHANA VILLAGE in Sultanpur district is just 150 km from Lucknow. One muggy September afternoon in 2006, 17-year-old Sarita told her parents that an upper-caste boy had been teasing her. When the girl's parents, Meera Devi and Sukhdev Harijan, approached the boy's family, they rubbished the charge.
Sarita's harassment only intensified. One morning, the teenager went missing. Her parents, Dalit landless labourers, filed a report with the police, but did not name anyone, though they suspected 23- year-old Dileep Singh, a Thakur. Days later, Sarita's bloated body was recovered from an unused well.
Sarita's waist-long hair had been stuffed in her mouth and her tongue was jammed between her teeth. The police arrived the next morning, conducted the post-mortem and cremated the body while the family was still in shock.
Since the post-mortem cited drowning as the cause of death, the police declared it a case of suicide. By the time Sukhdev Harijan gathered his wits and summoned the courage to question the probe, the police said it was too late to register a complaint
In backward eastern UP, no statistic on rape or murder comes as a shock. But when the chief minister is a Dalit woman, stock must be taken. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, the number of rape cases involving Dalit women in Uttar Pradesh was 375 in 2008, the highest in the country. In 2007, the year Mayawati took charge as CM, 318 rapes were reported; the year before, the rape tally was 240.
These are official figures — numerous cases never make it to the police register. In fact, the latest report of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes claims that cases of atrocities against Dalits are highest in UP, followed by Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
Some would say it is unfair to blame Mayawati for not knowing what's happening in remote corners of the large, populous state. But Sukhdev was not just any landless labourer. In the 2002 Assembly elections, he was a foot soldier of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Sukhdev had campaigned "day and night" for Bhagelu Ram as MLA — his distraught wife says "He was Bhagelu Ram's bhakt (devotee)." But Ram disappointed the family when he arrived belatedly, condoled quickly and left.
"Worse, it didn't matter to the BSP that a member of the community they claim to support, represent and fight for was left in the lurch," says Ram Kumar of the Dynamic Action Group, a Dalit organisation that Sukhdev later began to work with. "Even if we are to believe that Sarita wasn't raped and committed suicide, the police should have registered a complaint and investigated the cause," points out Kumar.
In 2007, Bhagelu Ram was re-elected for a second term from Kadipur. But Sukhdev's life took another twist. He was arrested in February this year for the murder of the youth, Dileep Singh, whom he suspected of raping and killing his daughter in 2006. Interestingly, Sukhdev had not even been named in the FIR filed by Dileep's father: instead, 70-year-old Gaya Prasad, a school teacher, told TEHELKA that he suspected two men related to him, who had threatened his son a few days before the murder. Besides the two named in the FIR, the police arrested two others, who "confessed" to killing the youth at Sukhdev's behest. While the police let off the first two suspects, Sukhdev remains in jail. The school teacher, meanwhile, is unhappy with the probe.
The state administration gives two arguments for the rising number of Dalit rapes in the state. First, that it is proportionate to the high percentage of Dalit population — 21 percent. The second reason is the "empowerment among Dalits to speak out ever since Mayawati has come to power", says Karamveer Singh, the state Director General of Police. So, regardless of the CM belonging to their community, Dalits still get beaten up, raped or eliminated as "punishment" for their acts of self-assertion.
The Supreme Court has ruled that if a woman claims she has been raped, her statement must be taken at face value until proven otherwise. Thus it should be easy to get a conviction in cases of rape and sexual harassment. But TEHELKA found the police to be blatantly prejudiced. "They not only try to hide the grave nature of the crime, but at times deny the crime itself," says SR Darapuri, a Dalit and former state Inspector General of Police who now works with Dalits. Indeed, going by the statements of policemen at the tehsil and block levels, all Dalits are liars, no Dalit is raped, Dalit women are characterless, the men lazy and their children both.
TO UNDERSTAND the role of the police, TEHELKA reconstructed the horrific journey of a rape victim. We started at the Primary Health Centre (PHC) where 25-year-old Mansa Devi was taken in March this year. A mother of two boys — Suraj, 5, and Chanda, 3 — Mansa had alleged that she and her husband were beaten up by the village Thakurs who then gangraped her because her family had defaulted on a loan. She claims the perpetrators also forced the barrel of a gun in her genitals.
The PHC does not have a lady doctor, only a midwife who is not qualified to conduct a medico-legal examination. Dr Kalicharan treated Mansa for wounds of "maar peet" (beating) when she was brought there. The policeman who brought her there did not mention rape. "When the doctor learnt that I was bleeding from my genitals, he advised me to persuade the police for a medical examination," recalls Mansa. Dr Kalicharan admitted to TEHELKA that he had advised Mansa, but declined to say whether she was raped or not. "We don't have the facility for an internal examination," he said.
Mansa's husband died soon after the incident. Though the family clams it was a result of the thrashing by the Thakurs, the cause remains unclear.
The next stop is the police station. Mansa points out Constable Jograj Singh, who took Rs 110 to register her complaint. When confronted, he denies the charge, swore under his breath and disappeared.
Next arrives Station Officer Hiralal Chaurasia, huffing and puffing. "Let me tell you about her background," he says, targeting Mansa's character, family and lifestyle. "But why didn't you register a complaint for rape when the woman alleged so?" we ask him. "Because she wasn't raped," he retorts, adding, "She admitted she was lying when I asked her."
Mansa is audacious and outspoken — qualities that the police don't expect in the injured party. "I retracted only because you abused me and my character," she snaps, recounting his abusive language.
We visited the State Human Rights Commission in Lucknow. It is a sanitised place; no complainants, only polite cops dot the cool corridors. Justice Vishnu Sahai, a retired judge of the Allahabad High Court, has files neatly stacked on his desk. He hints that a majority of the cases brought to his notice are fakes. "Dalits are trampled upon, oppressed, but there are other cases of human rights violations too," he says. His records show that the number of complaints of Dalit atrocities has come down from 352 cases in 2008 to 209 the following year. "Most of them do it (file rape cases) to get compensation money," says one officer.
Yet, most victims do not even know that under the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, there is a provision for granting compensation — between Rs 10,000 and Rs 1 lakh — to a Dalit victim of any crime. The few who file for compensation manage to do so with the help of local activists, who in turn take a "cut" for helping them.
IN ONE rare case in Hamirpur district, the state social welfare department gave Rs 25,000 compensation to Rekha, who was only six when an uppercaste neighbour who had known the family for nine years raped her. The police registered a complaint and a medical examination was conducted only because the local BSP MLA stays just two houses away. The medical report, however, ruled out rape as Rekha's hymen was intact.
In Rekha's case, the accused, a minor, was sent to a juvenile home for a month and then freed. The family moved soon after. When her parents go out for work, Rekha fends for herself dressed as a boy — cropped hair, trousers, no jewellery "Mayawati's coming to power doesn't mean things will change. The power structure remains the same at the village level," says Sudha Pai, a professor at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University and the author of The Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh (2002).
Lucknow-based journalist Sharad Pradhan disagrees with this line of reasoning. "Mayawati has risen to these heights on the Dalit agenda. She continues to harp on Dalits. Why shouldn't she be held accountable?" Indeed, few would disagree that when the BSP was gaining force in the 1990s, it had a tremendous opportunity to change the political and social landscape. But its priorities are different. "The BSP is only consolidating its position," says Pai.
Gokul Prasad, a landless Dalit farmer in Manjholi village of Hamirpur district, has stopped going to political rallies but rushes to help fellow Dalits in need. He understands their pain, for four years ago, his five-year-old daughter Radha was raped by an uppercaste neighbour after a family altercation.
Raping a child, it seems, is a way of settling scores. When villagers brought Radha home, the women of the house fainted. The child was soaked in blood, her legs and hips swollen. But the police abused them on caste lines and refused to lodge an FIR until Dalit activists forced them to do so, six days later.
It took the police over a year to arrest and jail the culprit, 35-year-old Lakhan Lodhi. But his family continued to pressurise Gokul for a compromise. A few months later, Gokul's 70-year-old father was murdered and house burnt. Soon after, Gokul and his brother Shivpal were arrested on charges of murdering a woman. The victim's son, a Lodh, the same caste as Radha's rapist, had named Gokul and his brother.
Out on bail now, the battle has begun yet again for Gokul. "I hear about an atrocity in the area and I rush to the spot," he says. Which means — by his own estimate — he is out at least four times a week. That tells a lot about a state where a Dalit chief minister clearly does not have her ears to the ground.
--
.Arun Khote
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of "Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC")
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Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre- PMARC has been initiated with the support from group of senior journalists, social activists, academics and intellectuals from Dalit and civil society to advocate and facilitate Dalits issues in the mainstream media. To create proper & adequate space with the Dalit perspective in the mainstream media national/ International on Dalit issues is primary objective of the PMARC.
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