SURAT (The Thursday Times) — Police in Gujarat have arrested six men after a 27-year-old Dalit man was tied to a pillar and beaten to death with sticks and electric cables on the outskirts of Surat, on suspicion of theft.
Anil Rathod and his friend Nilesh Rathod had gone to cut grass and foliage at a party plot, a venue hired out for weddings and other events, in Saniya Kanade village on Wednesday, police said. Men at the plot accused the pair of trying to steal, abused them with caste slurs, forced them into a vehicle, and took them to another party plot in Karadva village, about two kilometres away.
There, police said, the two were tied to the pillars of the venue’s dome and beaten with wooden sticks and whipped with electric service cables. Nilesh survived. Anil was badly hurt, and the attackers fled. His relatives found him unconscious and took him to New Civil Hospital in Surat, where doctors declared him dead on arrival.
“The accused allegedly formed an unlawful assembly, abducted the victims and took them to another party plot, where they tied them up and brutally assaulted them with electric wires and wooden sticks,” said Sunil Tarde, an assistant commissioner of police. “The assault proved fatal for Anil.”
Six arrested within hours
Police arrested six men within hours of the killing: Vijay Maurya, 35, Rahul Maurya, 32, Abhishek Maurya, 21, Sumit Singh, 21, Sujit Yadav, 19, and Mahendra Maurya, 21. All live in the area but come from Uttar Pradesh, five of them from Jaunpur district and one from Raebareli, police said. Relatives of the accused had leased both party plots, according to investigators.
The case was registered at Dindoli police station on a complaint from Anil’s brother-in-law, Prakash Rathod, a farm labourer. The six face charges of murder, kidnapping, wrongful confinement, and unlawful assembly, as well as offences under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, which covers crimes against Dalits and members of tribal communities. Police said they were still investigating what led to the attack.
A familiar pattern in Gujarat
Dalits, who sit at the bottom of India’s caste hierarchy, continue to face violence despite laws meant to protect them. In 2016, the public flogging of four Dalit men by cow vigilantes in Una, in the state’s Saurashtra region, set off weeks of protests across Gujarat.
