MUMBAI, 9 November 2006 — Making mockery of the tight security measures in place at the Maharashtra government secretariat in Mumbai, some 200 activists of the Republican Party of India and Khailangji Action Committee demonstrated outside the offices of the state chief minister and deputy chief minister yesterday.
Shouting slogans the activists, who were low-caste Hindus (Dalits), reached the meeting hall near the chief minister’s office on the sixth floor of the secretariat where a state Cabinet meeting was in progress. The protesters demanded that the government either order a judicial or a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the murder of four members of a Dalit family by upper-caste Hindus at Khailangji. They alleged that the police were biased toward the upper-caste Hindus and warned they would not tolerate any further delay in the arrest of the culprits. The demonstrators were later arrested.
Mumbai Police Commissioner A.N. Roy upset at the security lapse reprimanded the police officials for failing to prevent the protesters from reaching the office of the chief minister and the deputy chief minister.
Meanwhile, chairman of the legislature committee of Scheduled Castes’ Welfare and senior Congress deputy J.C. Chandurkar described Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil’s announcement of a CID probe into the murder of the Dalit family members as a “cruel joke.”
Prompt action should have been taken against the culprits instead of holding a probe, Chandurkar said. The police failed to provide substantial evidence to the court which resulted in the release of many accused, Chandurkar said.
Demanding that the case be handed over to the CBI or to a commission of inquiry, Chandurkar accused the home minister of protecting the guilty cops and said he would raise the Dalits’ murder issue in the assembly.
Ramdas Athavale, president of the Republican Party of India (Athavale faction) also demanded that the case be handed over to the CBI if the state CID failed to investigate it in a month. Hundreds of activists from the People’s Republican Party of India protested against the Dalits’ murder outside the police commissioner’s office. The situation in Nagpur, where violence and arson were reported during the past two days, was returning to normal.
Mumbai Train Bombings
A top Indian police investigator said yesterday that he would like a special court set up to try suspects arrested in the deadly July 7 Mumbai train bombings to cut through the country’s slow legal process. Thirteen men have been arrested in the case, in which bombs ripped through Mumbai’s packed commuter rail network, killing 200 people.
“Yes, we would like a separate trial court for the accused, but no final decision has been taken yet,” said K.P. Raghuvanshi, head of the anti-terrorist squad.
