PUNE, 8 November 2006 — For the second consecutive day, yesterday, a violent Dalit mob continued to indulge in violence and arson, setting shops and vehicles on fire and indulged in heavy stone pelting in rural Nagpur.
A mob of more than 5,000 people of the downtrodden Dalit community, are protesting against the killings of four of a Dalit family at Khairlanji village of neighboring district of Bandara, two months ago, allegedly at the hands of upper caste Hindus, because the Dalits refused to allow the upper caste Hindus to construct a road passing through their fields.
To control the situation in rural Nagpur, the police clamped section 144 of the Indian Penal Code and imposed dusk to dawn curfew in Kamptee town.
According to senior police officials in Nagpur, reached by phone from Pune this evening, the mob gathered at Hingana, a town outside Nagpur city, and attacked the police with petrol and kerosene bombs, and engaged the police in heavy stone pelting. Nearly 90 vehicles of police, scribes and local people were set ablaze. The mobs also torched two police stations in Indora and Wadi areas. The mob also attacked the office of Congress legislator Nitin Raut
To disperse the mob, the police first resorted to cane charge and when this failed to have an impact, the police fired teargas shells, and when this too did not help in dispersing the crowd, curfew was finally clamped.
Giving details of the incident leading to the violent demonstrations, a police officials said that four members of the Bhotmange family from Khailangji, including a woman and her two sons and a daughter, were brutally murdered, allegedly by upper caste Hindus, on Sept. 29, over refusal of the family to let the accused construct a road through their filed. A dispute followed, and the Bhotmange family were assaulted, and this led to their filing a police complaint, in which the police arrested some upper caste Hindus, which angered the Hindu community.
A village mob of Hindus which included some women too, pulled out Surekha Bhotmange and her sons Sudhir and Roshan and daughter Priyanka out of their house, stripped Roshan and Priyanka and killed all of them before throwing their bodies into a nearby canal. The Congress legislator Nitin Raut, a Dalit himself, had then alleged that the mob of Hindus had also raped Priyanka after stripping her naked.
Since no action was taken strongly against the Hindus, since the past two months, the Dalits lost patience and to highlight the case had taken to demonstrations on Monday and yesterday, which led to the present situation. "For the past 15 days, the Dalits have been holding minor demonstrations all over Nagpur and nearby towns, but it took an ugly turn since Monday" said a senior police official.
According to police officials in Nagpur, some 22 policemen including a sub-inspector and 12 people from the mob were injured in the stone pelting.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and Home Minister R.R. Patil commenting on the incident said that the government has ordered the murder case of the Bhotmange family to be handed over to the state Criminal Investigations Department (CID), Pune. The police, Patil said had so far arrested 48 Hindus including two women in the murder of the family.
Late yesterday evening, the situation in Nagpur was stated to be tense but under control and the police have rushed in additional reinforcement of State Reserve Police from Pune.
