14 Dalits locked up, tortured in K’taka, say police
The extent of torture was such that one of the workers, a pregnant woman, started bleeding and lost her baby, said a senior police officer, requesting anonymity.
A coffee estate owner and his son have been booked for allegedly torturing and keeping in captivity 14 Dalit workers, mostly women, in Karnataka’s Chikkamagaluru district, police said on Tuesday, adding that the accused are on the run.
According to the police, the incident happened in Hunasehalli village in the coffee-growing district. Police have identified the accused as Jagadeesh Gowda and his son Thilak.
The extent of torture was such that one of the workers, a pregnant woman, started bleeding and lost her baby, said a senior police officer, requesting anonymity. “All workers belong to the same village as the accused.”
A first information report (FIR) was registered against the father-son duo at the Balehonnur police station on Monday under Sections 504 (Intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 323 (Punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), and 342 (Punishment for wrongful confinement) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) besides Section 3(1) (Punishments for offences of atrocities) of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, a senior police officer said.
“They have been accused of forcibly locking up several workers, mostly women, in their staff quarters,” said the officer. “Both the father and the son are absconding.”
Meanwhile, a video surfaced on social media on Tuesday purportedly showing the woman who lost her pregnancy due to the torture narrating her ordeal.
“They (the father-son accused) tried to forcibly snatch our phones. When I declined to give them my phone, which was given to me by my mother, they verbally abused me, hit me and took away the phone,” the woman, identified as Arpita, is heard saying in the video. “When they pushed me, I hit a ledge and my stomach began to hurt a lot. Then I started bleeding. By the time we reached the hospital, I had to get aborted.”
HT cannot independently verify the authenticity of the video, which was widely circulated on social media on Tuesday.
In the FIR, registered based on a complaint filed by Arpita, police have claimed that there was a fight between relatives of Arpita’s husband Vijay and their neighbours over some issue 15 days ago.
The coffee estate owner and his son then locked up 14 workers inside their staff quarters until Satish and Manju (relatives of Vijay) repay a loan of ₹9 lakh they took from the father-son duo, another officer said, quoting local residents.
On October 8, the estate owner and his son went to Arpita’s home, demanding to know the whereabouts of Satish and Manju. They then hit her. When her husband and two other women tried to stop the duo from hitting her, they were also assaulted and locked up in the room, the officer quoted in the first place said.
The case has raised a question over the inhuman treatment meted out against members of marginalised communities in the state.
Between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021, a total of 2,327 cases of murder, exploitation and other cases on members of the SC/ST community have been reported in Karnataka, according to data from the state government, which HT has earlier reported.
It was an increase of over 54% from the previous year, when 1,504 such cases were registered, according to data from National Crime Records Bureau.