Dalit Girl Assaulted for Letting her Shadow Fall on Upperclass Man

Is modernity crumbling "under the Shadow" of Hate-Crimes? In one of the most extreme cases of modern-day untouchability, a Dalit girl was thrashed by an upperclass Chhatarpur family, because her shadow happened to fall on the body of the muscleman of the upper class group.

The incident folded out at a hand pump in the Ganeshpura Village of Chhatarpur, where the girl was fetching water for her family. The higher caste family was passing by, when their muscleman, Puran Yadav, came withing the range of the girl's shadow. The family, unreasonably enraged over the girl not keeping track of her shadow, was brutally assaulted by a woman in his family.

Furthermore, they threatened to kill her, if she dared to come back to that handpump, and even warned her not to report the episode to the police. But the minor girl and her family mustered the courage to do so, and reported the incident on the very same day at the Gadi Malhera Police Station.

A case under sections 323, 341, 506 of the IPC has been registered against the accused and further investigation is in process.

When untouchability was prevalent in India, before Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar united the lower class Dalits in revolt, they were not allowed to even touch people from higher classes, let alone eat or break bread with them. While this form of radical discrimination had been eradicated, such hate crimes keep surfacing from time to time in pockets of rural India.

Image Credits: Multiplyjustice.net