Caste killing: Minister criticises Anna Hazare silence

Mumbai: A Maharashtra minister has slammed anticorruption crusader Anna Hazare for remaining silent on the recent honour killing of a 17-year-old Dalit student over his relationship with an upper caste girl in Ahmednagar district.

Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme and Water Conservation Minister Nitin Raut has also urged Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan to set up a scheme that will ensure atrocities against Dalits are kept under check, on similar lines as the Dispute-Free Village Scheme of the state government.

Raut said even though the brutal killing of Nitin Aage, in Kharda village of Jamkhed block in Ahmednagar district, happened a few kilometres away from Hazare’s village, “Hazare has not uttered a word about easing caste tensions.”

Aage was allegedly beaten to death by the girl’s brother and his friends and then hung on a tree to make it look like he had committed suicide.

Addressing a press conference after visiting Ahmednagar, the minister said, “I heard that he said eradication of caste is the state government’s responsibility. If that is indeed the case, then even eradication of corruption is supposed to be the job of the government. Why did Hazare have to agitate?”

Raut said caste conflicts and honour killings were a blot on the progressive state of Maharashtra, which has seen a dramatic rise in caste-related crimes, and the need of the hour was for all political parties to find a solution to these problems.

He also suggested that the setting up of a Dalit Atyachar Mukt Gaon Yojana (Villages free from atrocities on Dalits or caste dispute redressal scheme), which would help in resolving such problems.

Raut plans to take up the matter in the cabinet meeting this week.

Following the horrific murder of four members of a Dalit family at Khairlanji in Bhandara district in 2006, the state government set up the Dispute Free Village Scheme.

Despite the spate of such attacks on backward castes, the conviction rate for cases falling under the state Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in 2012 was as low as 5.4 per cent.

Only 39 out of 7,039 cases pending in 2012 resulted in a conviction.

Alarmed by the rising number of incidents, last November, Ramdas Athawale of the Republican Party of India, which represents Dalits, complained to home minister R.R. Patil that 1,365 cases of atrocities against Dalits were lodged across the state in 2013 as compared to 1,089 the previous year.

Though Patil assured him that the government would not tolerate the attacks, such incidents have continued.

Meanwhile, several Leftist groups held protests in Dadar on Monday and many more were expected to stage demonstrations on Wednesday. The Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee has announced assistance of Rs500,000 (Dh30,653) to the family of the young victim.