New Delhi: A mob allegedly beat up a Dalit teen to death over a sexual harassment case filed by his sister in 2019 in Madhya Pradesh’s Sagar district, police said. His sister was also beaten and his mother was stripped naked when she tried to save her son from the attackers.
According to Additional Superintendent of Police Sanjeev Uikey, nine people have been charged with murder and three will face charges under the stringent Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribes Act, adding that eight people have been arrested. The 18-year-old victim’s sister alleged some people were pressuring her to withdraw her case and this led to the attack on them.
“They thrashed him a lot. He couldn’t survive. Hume beparda kar diya. I was stripped. Then the cops arrived and I was handed a towel. I stood there in a towel until they got me a saree,” NDTV quoted the victim’s mother as saying. She said the mob also ransacked and vandalised their home. “None of the household items are left intact. Even the pucca roofs were broken,” she wept.
Then they went to another house in search of her other two sons.
In 2019, the victim’s sister filed a case against four men, accusing them of threatening and beating her. All four were arrested in the case that is now in the courts, said the police.
The incident triggered a political row in election-bound Madhya Pradesh, with the opposition Congress and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party slamming the BJP government. The ruling party said prompt action was taken and accused the Congress of adopting a selective approach to crimes, according to the report.
