Dalit man beaten to death as social turmoil rages throughout India
by Michael Ireland
September 28, 2007
BIHAR, INDIA (ANS) -- A 60-year-old dalit was man beaten to death and another seriously injured on September 18 by landowners of Bhadrar village in Banka District of Bihar, India, one of many incidents of social amd religious turmoil in the region. Bhagwat Ravidoss, 60, a landless laborer, died after he was lynched by landowners and their henchmen on Tuesday night over a land-related dispute, according to Salem Voice Ministries News Service.
Hari Ravidoss, one of the relatives of Bhagwat Ravidoss, was also severely beaten and seriously injured. He was admitted to the Taluk hospital in critical condition.
SVM News Service says Police say poverty-stricken and landless Dalits have been living on land owned by the government for decades.
"Landowners and their henchmen attacked the Dalits and destroyed their thatched huts Tuesday night in a bid to capture the land. Bhagwat and Ravi were beaten up when they tried to put up a protest," a police spokesman told Salem Voice Ministries (SVM) News Service.
A case has been lodged against 49 people in connection with this incident but no one has been arrested yet.
Social Turmoil Raging Throughout India
On August 26, a tribal man and three women were brutally beheaded by a group of villagers who suspected them that they were practicing sorcery in Balasore district of Orissa, SVM News Service reports.
The next day, a 24-year-old man named Ramesh Patel was chained to a tractor, dragged and murdered in Palanpur district of Gujarat. A whole village watched yet no one uttered a word, the news service says..
On August 28, a mob gathered after a speeding truck in Agra, the home town of the Taj Mahal in Uttar Pradesh, crushed four teenagers and burned more than 54 vehicles and many shops nearby in which one person was killed and many were hospitalized. The same day, retaliatory killings were prevented in Gohana village in Haryana due to the prompt intervention of the Dalit elders and police force after one of their youths was found murdered.
On the following day, an unemployed youth named Salim Aurangzeb was tied to the motorcycle of a police officer and dragged along the road in Bhagalpur in Bihar in full view of the cheering crowds for alleged chain snatching. The same day Raibhan Tembhurne, a 55-year-old school teacher allegedly killed his 19-year-old college studentdaughter Ratna as a human sacrifice along with his two wives Reema and Sharda by the instruction of a black magic petitioner because he had fathered a son. As previouslt reported by SVM News Service, Mathews Pulimoottil Cor-episcopa, an 81-year-old village bishop of the Malankara (Indian) Orthodox Church, was severely beaten and hospitalized in Cochin in Kerala on that day.
On August 30, a Dalit woman was allegedly raped by two persons in Shajapur in Madhya Pradesh.
The following day, four alleged fuel thieves were tortured for hours and made to crawl by villagers and truckers near Bhubaneswar in Orissa. Also that day, as also previously reported by the news service, Mariyam, an elderly 83-year-old woman, was murdered in Trissur district of Kerala. A 45-year-old Dalit man, Brahmadas, was allegedly burned to death by his employers in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh on the same day.
On Sept 1, two elderly women were allegedly murdered by their sons in Keonjhar district in Orissa for practicing sorcery. The arrested youths told police they killed their mothers, who were in their 60s, because a witch doctor told them that their mothers were trying to kill them in order to achieve success in witchcraft after killing their fathers, who had died some time ago.
The next day, a girl and a boy were beheaded at Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh after they were found in a compromising position.
On Sept 3, Itwari, a ten-year-old boy was tied to a horse by a rope and dragged on the road by a Gujar crowd in Jalandhar District of Punjab for trying to stop their horses from grazing his fields. On that same day, T Solomon was tied to a tree near Kollam in Kerala and mercilessly beaten for allegedly stealing a cow. Police later found him mentally unsound. Also on that day, aAn elderly Dalit woman named Hirawati, 60, was beaten to death by four upper caste women over a petty dispute in the city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.
The next day, September 4, women of Vachunuru village in Andhra Pradesh ransacked belt-shops and seized ID liquor and IML when the authorities failed to prevent liquor 'menace' despite their requests. That same day, angry crowds lynched Shiv Mohan and tried to set his house on fire for allegedly raping and murdering a three-year-old girl in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. Also on September 4, Boraj Panchayat near Ajmer conducted a compulsory body search of all its citizens to detect the alleged rapist among them. The villagers also beat a man to death near Rourkela in Orissa for allegedly molesting a woman.
On Sept 5, two children were beaten, paraded on the streets and had their heads tonsured by villagers for allegedly stealing a few packs of detergent in Vaishali in Bihar. Krishna Khoya, suspected of murdering an elderly couple with witchcraft was executed by a tribal council in Jharkhand State.
Four days later, three boys aged between 17 and 18, who had robbed a motorcycle at gunpoint near Shriddala in Bihar, escaped lynching when police reached thescene on time. However, the right eye of one of the boys was gouged.
On Sept 10, two minor boys were beaten, paraded on the streets and their heads tonsured by villagers for alleged stealing detergent powder from a shop in Nawada district in Bihar.
Two days later, ten people belonging to the Nat community, were lynched in Vaishali district in Bihar. A high-level probe has found the 10 men were not thieves as earlier suspected.
On Sept 16, Hindu extremists burned down a prayer hall and beat Pastor Virendra Singh and his wife Bhavna in Barauli village near the Madiaon police station in Uttar Pradesh during the worship service as an act of Christian persecution. A mob of 30 extremists, led by Narendra Singh and Giri Baba, reached the prayer hall and picked a fight with the pastor. They threatened the couple and then set the thatched building on fire. The whole structure was reduced to rubble in a matter of a few minutes.
© 2007 ASSIST News Service, used with permission.
