The High Court of Karnataka has convicted 10 persons for intentionally humiliating and assaulting men and women belonging to Scheduled Castes (SCs) in a 15-year-old case of a clash between a group of persons belonging to two ‘upper’ castes and a group belonging to an SC community at Dunda village in Turuvekere taluk of Tumakuru district.
All accused sentenced
All the accused, D.R. Sudeep and nine others, including three women, have been sentenced to imprisonment for one year for rioting and voluntarily causing hurt under the provisions of the Indian Penal Code, and for intentionally humiliating members of the SC community and assaulting women of the community with an intention to dishonour or outrage their modesty, under the provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
Justice J.M. Khazi passed the order while allowing an appeal filed by victim-complainant Lakshmamma, who had questioned the Tumuakuru sessions court’s 2011 order of acquitting all the accused in the case. While imposing a fine on the convicts for various offences, the High Court directed the prosecution to pay the total fine amount of around ₹85,000 to Ms. Lakshmamma.
The case was registered in 2008 following a clash between a group of persons belonging to the Vokkaliga and Lingayat communities and a few members of an SC community following a dispute over boundaries of certain parcels of land.
In trial court
The High Court said that the trial court, without examining the oral and documentary evidence on record, had hurriedly come to the wrong conclusion that the prosecution had failed to prove charges against the accused.
“The view taken by the trial court is wholly unreasonable and is not a plausible view. Certainly, there is a non-consideration of evidence placed on record. There is also a palpable misreading of evidence and consequently, the conclusions arrived at by the trial court is perverse,” the High Court observed.
