Dalit woman burnt to death, minor girl held

Jaipur: Centre for Dalit Rights (CDR), an NGO, recently investigated a case where a Dalit woman, who had been taken to fields to clear straw in exchange for 15 kg of wheat, went missing in September this year from Sakulpura village of Karauli district. The team has concluded that the Dalit woman was burnt alive and her charred remains passed off as the body of a 17-year-old child bride who had returned to her parents’ home, so the Gujjar family of the young bride, which had since married her off to another man under the Nata tradition, could get her husband and his family off their backs.Karauli Superintendent of Police Hanuman Singh Kaviya said the girl who allegedly committed suicide has since been arrested. Asked how a young girl could commit such a heinous crime, he said, “The old woman was just about 35 kg in weight – this is a young girl just a little short of turning 18 years old.”An eight-member team of CDR conducted a fact-finding trip and compiled a report on November 17 , As Reported By TOI.

According to the Newspaper,Recounting the sequence of events, the report submitted by CDR says Teejo Devi, 65-year-old Dalit woman, had gone missing on September 12. When her son Vijendra went to check for her, he was told that she returned after performing the task of gathering straw in the fields of the Gujjar family.The woman’s son waited two weeks and then took a written complaint to police at Masalpur in Karauli on September 26. However, an FIR had been filed on September 13 at Masalpur of a young bride’s suicide – the 17-year-old girl, married as a child, had returned to the house of her parents and refused to go back to her husband.

Source: Nyoooz