Koppal: In a historic order, the Koppal District and Sessions Court in Karnataka on Thursday sentenced 98 people to life imprisonment and awarded five-year jail terms to three others in a 2014 case of discrimination and caste violence targeting Dalits in Marakumbi village of Gangavati taluk.
On August 28, 2014, in the SC colony of the village mentioned above, as many as 117 persons were charged with 'assaulting, abusing and torching' houses of people belonging to the Madiga Community over a movie ticket issue the previous day. No casualties were reported in the case.
While the case was being heard, over the years, 11 persons accused of the crime died and two minors were tried under the juvenile justice board.
Sessions court judge Chandrasekhar C convicted 101 people in the case, of whom three received lighter sentences because Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, couldn't be invoked against someone belonging to either community.
Case In Detail: On August 27, 2014, the primary accused Manjunath went to a movie in Gangavathi along with his friends. Suddenly they engaged in a brawl there with “unidentified” persons. Manjunath and his friends provoked and convinced members of the upper caste by claiming that it was residents of the SC colony in the village who abused them.
As per one of the victims, Bheemesh's complaint, a mob belonging to the upper caste arrived at their colony in the wee hours at 4 am with bricks, stones and sticks and started hurling casteist slurs against the residents of the colony. Then they attacked the huts and houses of the residents there.
"As many as 117 suspects were tried in the case, originating from an Aug 29, 2014, police complaint about a mob assaulting Dalits and torching their huts in retaliation to a clash the previous day," public prosecutor Aparna Bundi said.
After the incident, Marakumbi was under police surveillance for three months to avoid any untoward incident or violent episode. To raise their voice against the atrocities, the state's Dalit rights committee organised a march from Marukumbi to Bengaluru.
Verdict:While 98 were sentenced to life imprisonment, three others, who belonged to the ST community, were sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment and a Rs 2,000 fine. The sentenced life convicts, who have also been fined between Rs 2,000 and Rs 5,000 each, are in Ballari Central Jail.
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