P. Sainath

large_01-DALITS-44-31A_spotteda-PS-A_Dalit_Goes_to_Court-1.jpg

medium_01-DALITS-44-31A_spotteda-PS-A_Dalit_Goes_to_Court-1.jpg

small_01-DALITS-44-31A_spotteda-PS-A_Dalit_Goes_to_Court-1.jpg

thumbnail_01-DALITS-44-31A_spotteda-PS-A_Dalit_Goes_to_Court-1.jpg

01-DALITS-44-31A_spotteda-PS-A_Dalit_Goes_to_Court-1.jpg

When Bhanwari
Devi’s 13 year-old daughter was raped in the bajra fields by an upper caste
youth, she picked up a lathi and went after the rapist herself. She had no
faith in the police and courts. Either way, she was prevented from seeking any
redress by the dominant castes of Ahiron ka Rampura. “The village caste
panchayat promised me justice,” she says. “Instead, they threw me and my family
out of Rampura.”  Nearly a decade after
the rape, no one in this village in Ajmer district has been punished. It
doesn’t mean much, though, in Rajasthan. On average in
this state, one Dalit woman is raped every 60 hours. 

Data from reports of the National
Commission for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes show that nearly 900
cases of sexual assault of SC women were registered with the police between 1991 and 1996.
That’s round 150 cases a year – or one every 60 hours. (Barring a few months
of President’s rule, the state was entirely in Bharatiya Janata Party control through this
period.)  The numbers don’t measure the
reality. In this state, the extent of under-reporting of such crimes is perhaps the worst in the country. 

In Naksoda of
Dholpur district, the victim of one of the most dramatic atrocities has fled
the village. In April 1998, Rameshwar Jatav, a Dalit, sought the return of Rs.
150 that he had loaned an upper caste Gujjar. That was asking for trouble.
Enraged by his arrogance, a band of Gujjars pierced his nose and put a ring of
two threads of jute, a metre long and 2 mm thick, through his nostrils. Then
they paraded him around the village, leading him by the ring. 

The incident hit
the headlines and caused national outrage. It was widely reported overseas as
well, both in print and on television. All that publicity, however, had no
impact in ensuring justice. Terror within the village and a hostile bureaucracy
at the ground level saw to that. And with the sensational and spectacular out
of the way, the press lost interest in the case. So, apparently, did the human
rights groups. The victims faced the post-media music on their own. Rameshwar
completely changed his line in court. Yes, the atrocity had happened. However,
it was not the six people named in his complaint who had done it. He could not
identify the guilty. 

The senior
medical officer, who had recorded the injuries in detail, now pleaded
forgetfulness. Yes, Rameshwar had approached him with those wounds. He could not
remember, though, if the victim had told him how he had come by those unusual
injuries.

Rameshwar’s
father, Mangi Lal, has himself turned hostile as a witness. “What do you expect
us to do?” he asked me in Naksoda. “We live here in terror. The authorities
were totally against us. The Gujjars can finish us any time. Various powerful
people, and some in the police, forced this on us.”  Rameshwar has left the village.  Mangi Lal has sold one of the just three
bighas of land the family owns to meet the costs of the case thus far. 

For the world, it was a barbaric act. In
Rajasthan, it just falls into one of thousands of  &#39;Other IPC&#39; (Indian Penal Code) cases. Which means cases other
than murder, rape, arson or grievous hurt.  Between 1991-96,
there was one such case registered every four hours. 

In Sainthri in
Bharatpur district, residents say there have been no marriages for seven years.
Not of the men, at least. That’s how its been since June 1992, when Sainthri
was stormed by a rampaging upper caste mob. Six people were murdered and many
houses destroyed. Some of those killed were burned alive when the bittora (store of dung and fuelwood)
they were hiding in was deliberately set alight.

“The women of
Sainthri are able to get married because they leave the village when they do
so,” says Bhagwan Devi. “But not the men. Some men have left this village to
get married. People don’t want to send their daughters here. They know that if
we are attacked again, no one, neither police nor courts, will help us.” 

Her cynicism is
grounded in reality. Seven years after the murders, charges are yet to be
framed in the matter. That too, doesn’t mean much. One Dalit is
murdered in this state a little over every nine days. 

In the same
village lives Tan Singh, a survivor of the bittora
fire (see cover image). The medical record shows he suffered 35 per cent burns in that event. His
ears have been more or less destroyed. The little compensation he got – because
his brother was one of those killed – has
long ago disappeared in medical expenses. “I had to sell my tiny plot of land
to meet the costs,” says the devastated young man. That includes several
hundreds of rupees each time on repeated trips to Jaipur – on just travel
alone. Tan Singh has become just a statistic.  A Dalit is
the victim of grievous hurt every 65 hours in this state. 

In Raholi in
Tonk district, an attack on Dalits incited by local school teachers saw several
cases of arson. “The losses were very bad,” says Anju Phulwaria. She was the
elected –  Dalit – sarpanch, but, she says, “I was
suspended from the post on false charges.” 
She’s not surprised that no one’s been punished for the act. 

On
average, one dalit house or property suffers an arson attack every five days in
Rajasthan. In every
category, the chances of the guilty being punished are very few. 

Arun Kumar, the
soft-spoken chief secretary, government of Rajasthan, disagrees with the idea
of a structured bias against Dalits. He believes that the alarming numbers reflect
the commitment of the state in registering such cases. “This is one of the few states where there is
hardly any complaint about non-registration. Because we are diligent about it,
there are more cases and thus high crime statistics.” He also believes the
conviction rate in Rajasthan is better than in the rest of the country.

What do the figures
say? Former Janata Dal Member of Parliament Than Singh was a member of a committee investigating
crimes against Dalits in the early &#39;90s. “The conviction rate was around
three per cent,” he told me at his Jaipur residence. 

In Dholpur
district, where I visited the courts, I found it to be even less. In all, 359
such cases were committed to Sessions between 1996 and 1998. Some had been
transferred to other courts or were pending. But the conviction rate here was
under 2.5 per cent. 

A senior police
officer in Dholpur told me: “My only regret is that the courts are burdened
with so many false issues. Well over 50 per cent of SC /ST complaints are
false. People are put to needless harassment by such cases.” 

His is a widely
held view among the largely upper caste police officers of Rajasthan.  (A senior government official refers to the
force as the CRP  –  the “Charang-Rajput Police.”  These two powerful castes dominated the force
right up to the &#39;90s.) 

The idea that
ordinary people, particularly the poor and weak, are liars is deep-rooted in
the police. Take rape cases across all communities. The national average of such
cases found to be false after investigation is around five per cent of  the total. In Rajasthan, rape cases declared
“false” average around 27 per cent. 

This is like
saying that women in the state tend to lie five times more than women in the
rest of the country. The more likely explanation? A huge bias against women is deeply embedded
in the system. The ‘false rape’ data covers all communities. But a detailed
survey would likely establish that Dalits and Adivasis are the worst victims of
that bias. Simply: the level of atrocities they suffer is far higher than other
communities. 

I had been
assured everywhere I went in Rajasthan that Dalits were grossly misusing the law in general and the provisions of the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, in particular. Above
all, the much feared Section 3 of the Act under which those guilty of casteist
offences against Dalits and Adivasis can be imprisoned for up to five years along with a fine. 

In reality, I could not find a single case where such serious punishment
had been meted out to offenders.

In Dholpur
itself, the few punishments handed out in cases generally involving offences
against Dalits seemed unlikely to deter the guilty. They ranged from fines of
Rs.100 or Rs. 250 or Rs. 500 to one month’s simple imprisonment. The most
severe punishment I came across was six months simple imprisonment. In one
case, the guilty had been put on “probation” with bail. The concept of probation is one this reporter had never run
into in such cases anywhere else. 

Dholpur’s is not
an isolated instance. At the SC / ST Special Court in Tonk district
headquarters, we learned that the conviction rate was just under two per cent.

So much for the
numbers. What are the steps and the barriers, the process and the perils facing
a dalit going to court? That’s another
story.

This two-part story was originally published in The Hindu on June 13, 1999. It won the first
Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism, in the prize&#39;s inaugural
year, 2000.

A Dalit goes to court – 1

دلتوں کا عدالت پر بھروسہ نہیں رہا – ۱

ఒక దళితుడు న్యాయస్థానానికి వెళ్ళినప్పుడు - 1

ഒരു ദളിതൻ കോടതിയെ സമീപിക്കുമ്പോൾ - ഒന്നാം ഭാഗം

ஒரு தலித் நீதிமன்றம் செல்கிறார் – 1

'ದಲಿತನೊಬ್ಬ ನ್ಯಾಯಾಲಯಕ್ಕೆ ಹೋದಾಗ - 1'

ଜଣେ ଦଳିତ ଯେତେବେଳେ କୋର୍ଟକୁ ଯାଏ - ୧

এক দলিতের আদালত যাত্রা – ১

এজন দলিতে যেতিয়া আদালতলৈ যায়-১

दलिताने चढली कोर्टाची पायरी - १

Dholpur

At present, we can only accept donations in Indian rupees by Indian citizens. All donations made to the CounterMedia Trust are eligible for exemption under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Here is a copy of our exemption certificate.


India is bigger than New Delhi. And people need to know more about the rest of this vast nation.


Younger, media-saturated generations are growing up knowing little about their country, but a lot about the elites of a few metros and towns. For a narrowly-owned, commercially-driven media, the dumbing down of a nation is part of standard operating procedure. The last available data of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS, Delhi) show us that reports from New Delhi account for 66 per cent of news on the front pages of major dailies. The CMS data also found that just about 0.24 per cent of front page news came out of rural India. The TV channels are not much better.PARI exists to change that.We are a non-profit organisation. We publish under creative commons, and do not charge readers a subscription fee or put-up advertisements. Nothing is behind a paywall and we are completely free-to-access by anyone. We guard our independence and receive no direct grants from governments and corporations, nor any funding that could dictate our content. So, we are dependent on volunteer labour, donations from individuals, foundations and institutions that see value in independent and free media.PARI is changing the way Indian journalism reports and documents the rural.India is more than the elite of a few metros and towns. We report on rural lives and livelihoods, languages, communities, migrants and more. We need your help to pull off this most ambitious of Indian journalistic endeavours. The scale of this effort costs money. Donate generously - and spread the word about PARI.&nbsp;

Donate FAQs


Let’s get you acquainted

Welcome to PARI

All our content is, and will forever be free to consume. If you enjoy our work, you can support us by becoming a volunteer or by donating to help fund our work.

Want to republish this article? Please write to <a href="mailto:zahra@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">zahra@ruralindiaonline.org</a> with a cc to <a href="mailto:namita@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">namita@ruralindiaonline.org</a>

A Dalit goes to court – 1

Related stories

A rain-scented walk in Sivagangai

Living on ravaged land

Biswas and the bamboos on his bike

Recycling energy, Godda style

Bhadels of Goa

Pookadai: still throbbing with morning life

Koli Kadlas

Malnourishment high among children of migrants: study

Wheels of the rural Indian West

Living Under a Red Cloud in Bellary

Vedla – earrings of the Maher community

Dreaming of water, drowning in debt

Kali: the dancer and his dreams

Farmer's diet worse than a convict's

In Yavatmal, life goes on

Suicides are about the living, not the dead

Death of a carpenter

Hoisa Shigmo!

Women farmers: weaving a life in Anantapur

Defiant in Dhinkia

Spice and all that's nice

Kerala's Green Army

The ‘jugaad’ not-a-mobile

Health as someone else's wealth

Calibrating in a Kudumbashree assembly unit