AMN
Reports of atrocities on Dalits continue to pouring from different part of the country, The latest is from Uttar Pradesh where a couple from Dalit community have been been hacked to death after a row over a 15 rupees debt.
Police said the couple, Bharat and Mamta, were murdered by an upper caste grocer on Thursday when they told him they needed more time to pay for the biscuits they had bought from him.
Bharat Nat (48) and his wife Mamta (45) were attacked with an axe by an upper caste man when they refused to give him Rs 15.
The incident took place in Mainpuri as the couple were on their way to work. They were stopped by Ashok Mishra, the owner of a village grocery, who demanded that the couple pay the money for three packets of biscuits that they had bought for their three children a few days ago, reports say.
Police said the accused Ashok, who had a grocery store in Mainpuri, has been arrested.
He was demanding the money to buy some intoxicant and an argument over the matter led to the gruesome killing of the couple.
Meanwhile, the bodies of the couple have been sent for postmortem examination.
The Nats are a nomadic community and eked out a living by providing entertainment by the roadside. Many of the poor, landless Nats have abandoned their traditional occupation of rope dancing and jugglery and are mainly engaged as unskilled agricultural labourers.
The Dalit community in the village have blocked roads and protested over the incident. Earlier this month four low-caste Dalit men were assaulted by cow protection vigilantes while trying to skin a dead cow in western Gujarat state.
In March, a Dalit man was murdered for marrying a woman from a higher caste in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The woman’s father handed himself in and admitted to carrying out the attack on a busy road in daylight, police said.