A village head was arrested on Saturday after he allegedly hit a Dalit youth with slippers at Tajpur village in Muzaffarnagar district. In a video that has gone viral, Shakti Mohan, the village pradhan is allegedly seen beating the youth Dinesh Jatav with slippers in public.
Anil Kumar, MLA of Purqazi Assembly constituency, had tweeted the viral video tagging U.P. police officials, and demanded strict action. “After Rajasthan now in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar incident of atrocity against Dalit community would not be tolerated. The police administration must act immediately in the matter,” Mr. Kumar said in the tweet.
Mr. Kumar, a Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) MLA who is also from the Scheduled Caste (SC) community told The Hindu, “I tweeted the video in which a Dalit youth is being beaten with slippers by the village pradhan. It is a condemnable act; nobody has the right to play with someone’s dignity. One person has been arrested by the police and a case has been registered.”
After the video went viral, activists of Bhim Army, a Dalit rights group active in the region, organised a protest in the district demanding strict action against the accused. Muzaffarnagar is a part of Saharanpur division, which has sizeable Dalit population. The division has seen a rise in caste-related incidents of late.
The Hindu tried to contact the area's Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) for comments on the issue but no response was received.
The Dalit youth said the video is 15 days old and the village head was angry with him for comments he had posted on a local WhatsApp group predominantly consisting of SC members. "The village pradhan had used abusive language against a block-level head who belongs to the Dalit community, in a video. I had put out a post against it on our local WhatsApp group. The pradhan Shakti Mohan somehow came to know about it and so he hit me. He also threatened to kill me," Mr. Dinesh, who works as a labourer and supports the Bhim Army and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), told The Hindu.
Chapar Police have registered a case under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and other relevant laws.
