Atrocities against innocent Dalits continue…
Atrocities against innocent Dalits continue… No change in apathy of the state law machinery… Victims keep silence of fear…
Saturday, June 30-
Innocent Dalits continue to suffer from the atrocities meted out to them by non-dalits in Nepal. In an incident that happened three week ago in Banke, a far western Terai district, a man called Bhim Bahadur Bohara abused and assaulted a group of dalit women including Mina Sarki. Upon receiving the formal complaints from the victims, the police had arrested the offender, but released him soon on a nominal bail. It is also said that the culprit had already apologized with the victims and paid some compensation for medical expenses to them, weakening the case of a grave crime commited publicly.
In the central Terai district of Rautahat, ten women of Karuniya VDC-9 including a 15-year-old girl were reported to have been raped by a gang of local youths last Tuesday. Most of the rape victims are yet to file complaints against the offenders as the latter had ‘threatened to kill’ the women. All the victims hail from local Majhi families, a dalit community. According to Binod Patel, chairman of an NGO working for ‘poverty alleviation’ in dalit slums of the area, the victims chose to remain tight-lipped about the incident scared by the offenders’ threats. Identities of the offenders’ are still not known. However, the incident became public after a Dalit Network encouraged some of the victims to file complaints with the police at district headquarters Gaur, on Thursday. Only three of the victimized women appeared to file the complaints. According to locals, the other victims have not stepped outside their houses ever since the incident took place.
Clearly, in both these cases, state law machineries have not been too tough on the offenders, rather seemed to have no change in their traditional apathetic role. As a result, the victims are inclined to keep silence due to fear of their further insult and attacks from the offenders.
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