At Vikaliya on 28/3/2020 at 5:30 am, the survivor was sleeping in his house when police entered and took him and the other 7 young people out of the house and started beating them with sticks. Later police took them to the police station in Dhasa town in the police van and beat them with sticks and stones. The police also used caste-based abusive words. The entire Dalit community in the village was scared by the police torture to go in support of the survivors. When two Dalit Human Rights Defenders (DHRDs) intervened, the Police intimidated and harassed them and filed FIR on the two DHRDs because they are police and have power.
There was a delay in registering FIR due to COVID-19 lockdown. A case complaint was finally taken after 11 days after the intervention of the dysp-dsp Bhavnagar as well as IG Gandhinagar. The two DHRDs faced challenges while filing FIR due to Covid 19 lockdown. They were forced to remain inside their houses during the lockdown and it was evident that the police could make arrests at any time as well as trap them in false cases. A corona’s stamp was marked on the hands of the DHRDs and a written order sticker with a message to be quarantined was put outside their house. As it’s a case against the Police it was very challenging during the investigation.The accused (Police) is trying to make the two incidents seem as false charges.
There is no police protection given to the survivors. In this case the DHRDs took action to file a quashing petition in the Gujarat High Court.
Artist: Dharmesh (TODFOD)
#LockdownCasteAtrocities is a campaign by DHRDNet to highlight the cases of atrocity against Dalits that happened during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
