Enforce laws firmly to eradicate caste crimes

Incidents of attacks on Dalits are depressingly common across the country, owing partly to persistent feudal attitudes among a section of the upper caste population and also to the continuing social and economic vulnerability of the marginalised castes

Police have charged a coffee estate owner and his son for allegedly torturing and keeping in captivity 14 Dalit workers, many of whom were women, in Karnataka’s Chikkamagaluru district. The accused, who belonged to the dominant Gowda community, are accused of locking up the workers and torturing them over a delay in repayment of a ₹9 lakh loan. The First Information Report (FIR) says that the physical abuse over four days was so extreme that one of the women, who was pregnant, lost her child. The father-son duo is currently on the run after they were charged for intentionally causing hurt and wrongful confinement under the Indian Penal Code, and under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 2018.

Impunity enjoyed by dominant communities on account of their social power and economic status emboldens them to commit crimes; in this case, for example, even though the victims belonged to the same village as the accused, they couldn’t access community or government help for days (Getty Images)

Incidents of attacks on Dalits are depressingly common across the country, owing partly to persistent feudal attitudes among a section of the upper caste population and also to the continuing social and economic vulnerability of the marginalised castes. As this incident shows, impunity enjoyed by dominant communities on account of their social power and economic status emboldens them to commit crimes; in this case, for example, even though the victims belonged to the same village as the accused, they couldn’t access community or government help for days (of course, if they were migrant labourers, as is the case with many estates and plantations, they would have faced an additional layer of difficulty with language and lack of local connections). It also shows that caste-based labour patterns have remained somewhat undisturbed despite decades of social and economic reform and point to the need for continued government support, legal protections and affirmative action for these marginalised groups. But most of all, it underlines the need for the law enforcement authorities to be strict, fair and consistent in their application of atrocity and caste-based crime laws in order to erode the culture of impunity and feudal power around such incidents.