INDIA: Police in Gujarat support the beating and social exclusion of three Dalit families

Dear friends, 

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information that a local feudal leader and his family, the Khans, who control affairs in Ingoli village, Gujarat, are behind the social ostracism of three Dalit families. After a young Dalit man complained to the police of being beaten by a group of Khans, his relatives were beaten again and the community told that fines would be dealt out to anyone associated with the man’s family in any way. The family members have lost their jobs and are struggling to find food. Though caste-based discrimination is a crime in India, the police initially refused to register a case when approached by the victims. After registering the case under pressure, officers have failed to take further action. 

CASE DETAILS: (According to Navsarjan, a human rights organisation based in Gujarat) 

The first in this series of incidents happened on 21 January 2009 at about 4pm, when Mr. Kiranbhai Natubhai Parmar, a Dalit living in Ingoli village, was returning home from work in a public bus. He and the seven accused, the male members of the Khan family, were all standing inside the bus, but when a passenger disembarked, Kiranbhai sat down. One of the accused then called him a ‘dhedh’ (a derogatory term suggesting lower caste) and declared that as long as the ‘Khan Sahibs’ (Khan Masters) were on the bus, a ‘dheda’ cannot sit. When Kiranbhai refused to give up his seat the seven punched and kicked him. 

The Khan family is from the Pathan community and enjoys a higher social status within the Muslim community. In India, caste based discrimination has its parallels in all religious groups. 

Neither the driver nor the conductor interceded, and they were forced to stop and leave Kiranbhai on the road between Trasad and Pisavada villages, about 7km from his village, after being threatened by the Khan men. The victim was able to get a three-wheeler and returned home at about 6pm, but pain from his internal injuries lasted several months. 

The next day Kiranbhai, his mother Hiraben Parmar and his father Natubhai Tishabhai Parmar, went to lodge a complaint at Dholka Police Station, but literally watched as an officer call the Khans to inform them of the complaint. They then accepted the family’s application but refused to register a case, advising them to go home; if they pushed on with the complaint, they said, the family would not likely be able to stay in their village. The Khan family later called them, offering to take no action against them if they took back their complaint, which the Parmars refused. 

On February 5 the Khans announced a gathering at the local mosque, where they decreed that, beginning on February 6, anyone who associated with Natubhai’s family or his two brothers’ families (Ishwarbhai being the elder brother and Galabhai the younger) by offering them work or selling or giving them any goods, would be fined 5000 rupees. The three families determined to stay and fight the boycott. 

However on February 9, the water pipes to the fields owned by the three brothers were cut off. On March 8, Ishwarbhai was badly beaten by 11 members of the Khan family after he rented a wheat threshing machine from a nearby village. The operator had stopped shortly after a call from a Khan who threatened to destroy the machine and burn the operator alive, and when Ishwarbhai called the police he was taken to Majid Khan’s home by an officer called Jasaratbhai. The policeman entered the house and allowed Ishwarbhai to be beaten with wooden sticks for about fifteen minutes before taking him back home. 

The police officer is from the Koli Patel community of the state, which is above the Dalits in the caste hierarchy. 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: 

When Navsarjan staff members met family members on June 6, the victims complained that each of their earning members had lost his job within the past four months, including Kiranbhai who was dismissed on 23 January. None have been able to find work since. Kiranbhai finally stopped trying when even a company, Cadila, thirty kilometres away from the village refused him a job due to the events. Navsarjan informs us that the Khan family’s grip on the community is related to their and their friends’ control of the water sources in the area. Most of the shops in the village are also under the influence of the Khan family and the family have survived on food donated by other Dalit families in neighbouring villages. But beyond this other Dalits are too scared to be of help. The only stable income for the three families is from the salary of Ishwarbhai’s son, Jitendrabhai, who is a primary school teacher in a government school in a neighbouring village, Ganol. The three families have also been unable to provide fodder or water for their three buffaloes. 

The families continue to receive threats and intimidation from the Khan family, and they are afraid to go to places under the influence of the Khan families in the village. The women are verbally harassed when they go to fetch firewood. 

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: 

Social ostracism tends to meet Dalits whenever there has been an attempt by one to assert his rights and to challenge the status quo. By wholly ostracising Dalit communities and preventing their access to the law, social boycotts have been a powerful tool for continuing the oppression; yet public awareness of the issue has been minimal. Media attention is given to more shocking atrocities. Yet social boycotts are powerful precisely because they involve the mundane. 

These boycotts impinge on the daily lives of the targeted Dalit communities, making every small effort more difficult, wearing down morale and community cohesion and reminding Dalits that they live on the fringes of society. Families go for months without any source of income and must depend on the charity of others, or are forced to travel long distances daily for labour at low daily wages. The basic necessities can only be obtained from great distances. Women like Hiraben, a female member of the three ostracised families, bear the brunt of coping with constant threats to themselves and their family. 

The case also shows that untouchability is practiced even outside the Hindu communities. In India, the caste system is so ingrained that it extends to Hindus, Muslims, and Christians alike. 

The impunity enjoyed by the Khan family shows the problems Dalits have in gaining access to the law. The case and a First Information Report (FIR) for assaulting Kiranbhai were only registered after the intervention by an NGO and on orders from the District Superintendent of Police (DSP) and Police Sub-inspector, nineteen days later. The proper provisions of law under the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 were not included in the FIR. Though the FIR for the beating of Ishwarbhai was registered promptly, the names of accused were excluded by the police. One excluded accused is Majid Khan, the most prominent member of the Khan family in Ingoli. Though all the accused named on the FIR were arrested, bail was granted within a few hours. The two case numbers are 16/2009 and 20/2009, Dholka police station. 

The government has provided a scheme for compensation and rehabilitation in such cases, but again the problem is one of access. In order to receive benefits, the social boycott must first be officially declared by the Social Welfare Office (SWO). Though these boycotted families visited the SWO to get such a declaration, one has not been issued. Provisions of compensation and rehabilitation are essential to fighting a social boycott, and strengthening the ability of Dalit communities to gain access to the rights due to them. 

SUGGESTED ACTION: 

Please send letters to the authorities named below expressing your concern in this case. The AHRC is also sending a letter to the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance calling for an intervention in this case. 

To support this case, please click here: SEND APPEAL LETTER