(Reuters, February 6, 2007)
New Delhi, India - India's police and legal
system had failed "deplorably" to
protect people from the country's lowest castes,
an official commission said on Tuesday, suggesting
exclusive courts be set up to ensure speedy
justice.
Formerly called untouchables, the country's
Scheduled Castes or Dalits make up around 160
million of mainly Hindu India's 1.1-billion
population.
Despite special laws to protect them, they continue
to face discrimination and violence, especially
in rural areas.
Crimes against Dalits, including rape, murder
and social boycott by upper castes, have lower
conviction rates than the national average,
at around 29 percent against 42 percent, the
National Commission For Scheduled Castes said.
"We must admit...the deplorable, negative
role of our men in uniform who, instead of protecting
the victim, protect the culprits by inaction,
inefficiency and rent-seeking," said Fakir
Bhai Vaghela, the vice-chairman of the commission.
He was speaking to top police officers and officials
from Indian states at a meeting organised by
the commission, an autonomous body set up by
the government to protect the interests of the
disadvantaged.
The panel proposed "exclusive courts"
that would deal with only cases of atrocities
and discrimination against Dalits to speed up
convictions which can take years.
"Seventy percent of people who commit crimes
against Dalits are getting off," Phool
Chand Verma, a NCSC member, said. "The
police also do not register cases therefore
atrocities continue."
In Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state,
around 50,000 caste- related cases against Dalits
are pending. But only four have been resolved
by fast-track courts since 2002.
Dalits in rural areas were often discouraged
by police from filing reports, Verma said, adding
the actual number of attacks or incidents of
discrimination in 2005 -- the year for which
figures were last compiled -- were probably
around 150,000.
Though India has reserved government jobs and
college seats for Dalits and a Dalit is currently
the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the
community remains among the poorest and most
socially and economically deprived.
In December, a hungry Dalit girl from the eastern
state of Bihar had the fingers of her right
hand chopped off by an upper-caste land owner
for taking spinach leaves from his field.
In another case, all upper-caste passengers
walked out of a bus in southern India when a
Dalit got on, the commission said, according
to a report it received last year.
"It is to be regretted that even after
57 years since untouchability was 'abolished'...we
are unable to implement successfully basic provisions
(of laws protecting Dalits)," Vaghela said
