Suspicious death of Dalit youth snowballing

Peddapalli: Controversy is raging over the suspicious death of a dalit youth who was in love with an upper caste girl and was reportedly found dead under mysterious circumstances on the outskirts of Khanapur village in Manthani mandal of Peddapalli district a fortnight ago.

As the victim, Manthani Madhukar, went missing from his house on March 13 and was found dead on March 14, the Manthani police registered a case of suspicious death. Dalit organisations and others staged dharna alleging that the victim was brutally killed for falling in love with an upper caste girl in Venkatapur village.

Meanwhile, a video clipping of the post-mortem being conducted on the youth went viral whereby it was found that his private parts and eyeballs were missing. Following the surfacing of the video clip, the Peddapalli district police led by DCPs Vijayender Reddy and John Wesley, ACP Apoorva Rao and others visited the village on Saturday and interacted with family members of the victim. Talking to the media at Manthani, police officials said video clip was false and baseless. They said there were no injuries on the victim’s body when they recovered the body and conducted ‘panchanama’ before the family members. They also claimed that they had photos of the victim to prove that the charges made in the social media were false.

The police said that they would conduct a re-post-mortem if the family members had any doubts. They were conducting an inquiry into the mobile phone data of the victim, they said.

Meanwhile, Telangana JAC chairman M. Kodandaram demanded that the government conduct a judicial probe into the incident. He also sought re-post-mortem and registration of case under the SC\ST Atrocities Act.

There were no injuries on the victim’s body when the police recovered it.

Source: The Hindu