On April 28, the body of a 17-year-old Dalit boy was found hanging from a tree, in Kharda village in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district. He had a broken spine and burn marks all over his body. The boy, Nitin Aage, had been allegedly killed by a group of Maratha men for daring to speak to an upper-caste girl.
The police have arrested 13 suspects so far, but had it not been for the intervention of Dalit activists, Aage’s death may not even have been recognised as a murder. According to a fact-finding report drawn up by a group of activists this week, the police first intended to record the incident merely as an accidental death.
The report, written by a team of seven activists from the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights and the Republican Panthers Annihilation of Caste group, said that though the media emphasised the fact that Aage was a Dalit youth killed by upper caste men, the report claims that the police and other lobbies in Ahmednagar are attempting to label it as a case of honour killing unrelated to caste.
“In many cases of atrocities against Dalits, the caste angle is suppressed, even if the guilty are punished,” said Arun Ferreira, one of the seven members of the fact-finding team put together by the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights and the Republican Panthers Annihilation of Caste campaign. They plan to submit their report to the police and local government officials by the end of the week.
The police frequently underplay the casteist nature of such crimes, Ferreira said, in order to create the impression that caste-based oppression is no longer a major problem in India. Despite this, the number of crimes reported against Dalits remains significantly high across the country. Here are the figures for Maharashtra alone, both in terms of general crimes as well as crimes registered under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
Aage was in class at the Rayat Shikshak Sansthan, a well-known school and junior college near Kharde village, when he was allegedly taken out by three Maratha men, beaten in the school premises, dragged across to the nearby highway road and eventually taken to an abandoned area where they smeared him with burning embers and hung him from a tree, to make it look like a suicide.
By this time, eye-witnesses had already informed Aage’s parents that their son had been beaten by Sachin Golekar, the brother of the upper-caste girl Aage had spoken to, and his friend Sheshrao Yeole. Later, Aage’s parents stated in their complaint that they had warned their son to stay away from the upper-caste girl to avoid any trouble.
Several witnesses in and around Aage's school described to the fact-finding team how the beating had taken place. “But many of the young witnesses claim that the police has not recorded their statements,” said Shabana Khan, an advocate from Mumbai who was part of the team.
Even though the police have booked Sachin Golekar, Sheshrao Yeole and other suspects for murder as well as under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, the report suggests that there have been deliberate lapses in the investigation.
“For one, the police claim they were unable to take the statement of the girl Nitin spoke to soon after the crime, because that would hurt her family’s sentiments,” said Khan. However, a few days later, news emerged that the girl had attempted suicide by setting herself on fire and is now battling for life in a Solapur hospital.
“We want investigating teams to recognise the girl is also a victim and that her statement would be important for the case,” said Ferreira.
While the fact-finding team believes that it is impossible that the school authorities were unaware of the fact that a student was being beaten up on campus, the police have not recorded the statement of the school principal. The deputy superintendent of police cited “the principal’s due retirement and his inability to take pressure” as the reasons for not recording his statement, says the report.
“That school is well-known in the area because its committee members include NCP [Nationalist Congress Party] leaders like Sharad Pawar, Ajit Pawar and Supriya Sule,” said Shyam Sonar, a member of the Republican Panthers organisation. “The Golekars themselves are part of the administration of the institute, so it is not surprising that they are being protected.”
The Golekar family, according to the report, is closely associated with the NCP and enjoys a lot of “economic and socio-political clout” in Kharda village. While Nitin Aage’s father is a landless labourer in a stone-crushing mill, the Golekars own more than 500 acres of land and a number of businesses.
The fact-finding team has recommended that the school management, principal and teachers should be made co-accused in the crime, that the safety of the Aage family and the girl from the Golekar family should be ensured and that the Ahmednagar district superintendent of police should be suspended. “A proper investigation should be done to bring out the casteist intent of the offence so as to ensure proper applicability of the charged provisions of the Prevention of Atrocities Act,” the report says.
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The police have arrested 13 suspects so far, but had it not been for the intervention of Dalit activists, Aage’s death may not even have been recognised as a murder. According to a fact-finding report drawn up by a group of activists this week, the police first intended to record the incident merely as an accidental death.
The report, written by a team of seven activists from the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights and the Republican Panthers Annihilation of Caste group, said that though the media emphasised the fact that Aage was a Dalit youth killed by upper caste men, the report claims that the police and other lobbies in Ahmednagar are attempting to label it as a case of honour killing unrelated to caste.
“In many cases of atrocities against Dalits, the caste angle is suppressed, even if the guilty are punished,” said Arun Ferreira, one of the seven members of the fact-finding team put together by the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights and the Republican Panthers Annihilation of Caste campaign. They plan to submit their report to the police and local government officials by the end of the week.
The police frequently underplay the casteist nature of such crimes, Ferreira said, in order to create the impression that caste-based oppression is no longer a major problem in India. Despite this, the number of crimes reported against Dalits remains significantly high across the country. Here are the figures for Maharashtra alone, both in terms of general crimes as well as crimes registered under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district, where Nitin Aage was murdered, has seen at least 73 incidents of caste-based atrocities last year, according to the fact-finding report.
Aage was in class at the Rayat Shikshak Sansthan, a well-known school and junior college near Kharde village, when he was allegedly taken out by three Maratha men, beaten in the school premises, dragged across to the nearby highway road and eventually taken to an abandoned area where they smeared him with burning embers and hung him from a tree, to make it look like a suicide.
By this time, eye-witnesses had already informed Aage’s parents that their son had been beaten by Sachin Golekar, the brother of the upper-caste girl Aage had spoken to, and his friend Sheshrao Yeole. Later, Aage’s parents stated in their complaint that they had warned their son to stay away from the upper-caste girl to avoid any trouble.
Several witnesses in and around Aage's school described to the fact-finding team how the beating had taken place. “But many of the young witnesses claim that the police has not recorded their statements,” said Shabana Khan, an advocate from Mumbai who was part of the team.
Even though the police have booked Sachin Golekar, Sheshrao Yeole and other suspects for murder as well as under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, the report suggests that there have been deliberate lapses in the investigation.
“For one, the police claim they were unable to take the statement of the girl Nitin spoke to soon after the crime, because that would hurt her family’s sentiments,” said Khan. However, a few days later, news emerged that the girl had attempted suicide by setting herself on fire and is now battling for life in a Solapur hospital.
“We want investigating teams to recognise the girl is also a victim and that her statement would be important for the case,” said Ferreira.
While the fact-finding team believes that it is impossible that the school authorities were unaware of the fact that a student was being beaten up on campus, the police have not recorded the statement of the school principal. The deputy superintendent of police cited “the principal’s due retirement and his inability to take pressure” as the reasons for not recording his statement, says the report.
“That school is well-known in the area because its committee members include NCP [Nationalist Congress Party] leaders like Sharad Pawar, Ajit Pawar and Supriya Sule,” said Shyam Sonar, a member of the Republican Panthers organisation. “The Golekars themselves are part of the administration of the institute, so it is not surprising that they are being protected.”
The Golekar family, according to the report, is closely associated with the NCP and enjoys a lot of “economic and socio-political clout” in Kharda village. While Nitin Aage’s father is a landless labourer in a stone-crushing mill, the Golekars own more than 500 acres of land and a number of businesses.
The fact-finding team has recommended that the school management, principal and teachers should be made co-accused in the crime, that the safety of the Aage family and the girl from the Golekar family should be ensured and that the Ahmednagar district superintendent of police should be suspended. “A proper investigation should be done to bring out the casteist intent of the offence so as to ensure proper applicability of the charged provisions of the Prevention of Atrocities Act,” the report says.