Family members of a Dalit man who had been beaten to death by an upper-caste Hindu mob on 14 December have been protesting on the premises of Hisar government hospital for the 12th day on Sunday, refusing to cremate the body till all the members of the mob were arrested.
38-year-old daily wager Vinod had been beaten to death, and two of his kin Sandeep and Bhal Singh injured, in Mirkan village of Hisar district in Haryana on 14 December. The assailants accused Vinod and his kin of stealing an electric motor.
Vinod’s body is kept in the mortuary of the Civil Hospital. Family members are not ready to accept it without the fulfillment of their demands.
The family members were seeking Rs 50 lakh as compensation, a government job for Vinod’s wife, arrest of all 17 accused in the case, Rs 25 lakh compensation for two injured in the incident, and government jobs to the injured on “DC rate.”
“We have been sitting here in deep distress for days now,” Vinod’s wife Suman told The Wire. “I have a one-year-old son, and there is no one here for him or for me. I am on my own now,” she said.
“We haven’t eaten for days. We are a total of 12 people in the family. He was the one feeding us all. We have been sitting here [at the camp site] for close to ten days now. We are not satisfied with what the police are doing. First, they told us that they had arrested six people, then they said something else. They have let us sit here and rot,” Vinod’s sister Manju said to the news website.
In a statement to the cops, the family members of Vinod stated 17 persons from the upper-caste Jat community were responsible for the murder. An FIR has been registered with murder charges and under sections of SC/ST Act. Police arrested six people so far and the arrested men were identified as Inder Singh, Rajpal, Vijay, and Bhagirath.
Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan met Vinod’s family Saturday and assured them of all possible help.
On Saturday, 25 December, family members, and Dalit groups including Azad Samaj Party gheraoed the residence of Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Kamal Gupta.
According to The Tribune, at least 33 different organisations staged a sit-in outside the MLA’s residence
