Ashu, a 17-year-old Dalit girl from Sinauli village, was deprived of a resting place in a village cremation ground, recently.
For ten hours, her relatives begged the village musclemen to let them use the ground in Sinauli. However, the grabbers of the ground declared that the place has been reserved for non-Scheduled Castes.
Initially, the police administration did not force the affluent people to let the Dalit family perform their daughter's last rites, allegedly because the former are followers of the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP).
Interestingly, state SC/ST Commission vice-chairman Mukesh Siddharth was present in Baghpat district when the drama was unfolding.
Later, the girl was cremated in another ground after Lokesh Dixit, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MLA from Baghpat, arrived to resolve the deadlock.
He suggested the family members hold the cremation elsewhere instead of engaging in a verbal duel.
Pradeep Prasad, father of the deceased, said: “We didn’t know when they decided that only non-SCs would use the village cremation ground. There are two grounds in the village for this purpose - one has been encroached upon by a rich family and the other was grabbed by some goons owing allegiance to the ruling party. Obviously, we don’t have a place for our dead. The MLA suggested that we carry out the last rites on an unclaimed government land.”
“We also staged a sit-in at the tehsil office for eight hours. But instead of helping us, the police and local administrative officers were siding with the affluent people in stopping us. Later, the administration agreed to conduct a probe and the police booked three people only after realising that it could turn into a caste-based issue.”
Baghpat SDM Yashwardhan Srivastava said: "Cases have been registered against three people and an investigation has begun."
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