essay on violence against dalits in india

‘Does a Dalit’s life have no value?’: The murder of a teenage girl in India

Family members of the 14-year-old say she was raped and murdered. As they seek justice, social tensions erupt in their village.

Muzaffarpur, India – As protesters took to the streets of Kolkata to demand justice for a trainee doctor who was raped and murdered on August 9, 55-year-old Nirali Kumari* gasped for breath in her small wooden hut 480km (300 miles) away. She hadn’t left her home – or even her bed – since the body of her 14-year-old daughter was found on the morning of August 12 – naked, bloodied and with her hands and legs tied.

Kumari says “six men wielding knives” entered her home on the night of August 11. “[They] threatened us and kidnapped my daughter. She was sleeping right here, with her elder sister,” she adds, before breaking down.

When Al Jazeera first met Kumari, she was so overwhelmed by grief that she had not eaten in the five days since her daughter’s body had been discovered. Her wrist was bloodied and bandaged from the cannula feeding her fluids. She fainted from time to time in the suffocating heat of her hut, even as a relative waved a handheld fan over her.

‘Tool of oppression’

Kumari’s daughter’s body was found in a paddy field near her home in the area of Paroo in Muzaffarpur district, Bihar, one of India’s most populous states.

The murder of the teenager – who belonged to the Dalit community, the least privileged in India’s complex caste hierarchy, a position that has enabled its persecution for centuries – has put the entire village on edge.

Kumari’s family lives in a village in Paroo, located nearly 80km (50 miles) from the state capital, Patna. The village is home to fewer than 5,000 people and is surrounded by vast paddy fields. Colourful cement houses belonging to the dominant Yadav community, an estimated 4,500 people, sit on either side of the potholed, date tree-lined main road that runs through the village. Towards the end of the road, 18 grass and bamboo huts house the local Dalit community, which numbers about 80.

A historical system of feudal rule is still a lived reality for millions of people in Bihar, and Paroo is no exception. Across the state, Dalit families depend on dominant caste landlords to earn a living by working on their land for a daily wage. Landowning families often lend money at high interest rates, which can trap families in debt.

In the past, there have been moments of friction between the communities. Last year, during Holi, the Hindu festival of colours, Dalit children crossed over to the “Yadav side” of the village while playing with coloured powders, causing arguments between the communities. The police had to intervene to prevent an escalation, a Dalit resident tells Al Jazeera.

The primary defendant in the murder case, Sanjay Rai, 42, belongs to the Yadav community and is an influential landlord. The men who abducted the girl were masked, but the family identified Rai by his voice and build. The defendant is well-known in the village.

Local media first reported that Kumari’s daughter was gang-raped and murdered after witness accounts and the family reporting the crime to the Paroo police.

Indian law prohibits revealing the identities of victims and their families in sexual violence cases. However, at a news conference on August 19, the police announced they were ruling out rape based on the findings of the postmortem report and the investigation. They also shared that they had arrested Rai and four men from the Dalit community for murder and conspiracy to murder.

The girl’s killing and the authorities’ handling of the case have sparked tension in the village.

Dalit and human rights activists, including some from Paroo, decry the implication of Dalit men, seeing it as the result of pressure and influence from members of the dominant caste to conceal the attackers’ identities and silence their community.

They see the girl’s murder as a clear example of a crime inflicted by the dominant caste on the Dalit community and the case as one resulting from systemic caste oppression.

“Dominant castes have long used [violence, especially] sexual violence, as a tool of oppression. They see themselves as powerful because of their social identity,” says Manjula Pradeep, director of campaigns at the Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network (DHRDN). “Their perception depends on the subjugation of rights of the people from the lower castes.”

‘Kept this family together’

The girl’s schoolbag lay on a wooden bed, and her school dress hung from a plastic hook on the wall. Her elder sister stared at the bag while their mother wailed in the room filled with visitors.

Kumari says her daughter was innocent and sincere. “Just another child,” she says.

“She was beautiful like a flower but also a straight talker,” Kumari recalls, referring to how her daughter would speak up when she felt she needed to. “She was the child who kept this family together. From my medicines to managing our meals, she was young but could do it all.”

The ninth-grade student wanted to complete her high school education, but she often struggled to find time to attend school while helping her parents, both daily-wage labourers, by working in the rice fields and doing chores at home.

Not everyone in the village knew the girl before her killing. But Suraj*, a neighbour of the family who requested his name be changed, fearing repercussions from dominant caste villagers, says Rai has a reputation as “a womaniser”.

Rai had been fixated on the teenager and had pressured her to marry him, the victim’s relatives tell Al Jazeera. “He offered us a tractor and some money,” Kumari explains.

When the girl refused, he harassed the family on the phone.

“I was scared and thought the only way to save my daughter was to marry her off silently,” Kumari says. Even though the legal age for a bride in India is 18, she says she had no choice but to marry her to someone else, a man in his early 20s.

The teenager was set to be married in a nearby village on August 19.

Kumari wailed loudly before fainting again. After a relative splashed her with water, she gasped back to consciousness and broke down.

“Does a Dalit’s life have no value? Or is this country only for the people with money?” she asks. “We want a life for a life.”

‘Dalits are the easiest target’

Sanjay Kumar, 28, navigated the vast maze of the village’s paddy fields under the scorching sun. As he neared where the teenager’s body was found, he grew distressed, speaking falteringly.

He was one of two people who picked up the girl’s body on August 12 in the presence of police officials. He had been working in a paddy field when he heard the shouts and cries of the people who first spotted the body.

“Everyone was terrified just by the sight of the body. I cannot even describe that feeling,” he recalls.

He lives about 80 metres (nearly 90 yards) from the girl’s hut and was shocked when he recognised her face. Then he removed his gamcha, a type of long scarf, to cover her body.

Scratching his shaved head, Kumar says: “Her hands and legs were tied, and she had grave injury marks on her scalp and lower neck.”

These injuries were corroborated in the postmortem report shared by police officials with Al Jazeera. As he lifted the body, Kumar says, he was drenched in blood from the girl’s head and pelvic area. Pelvic injuries were not mentioned in the report.

As a Dalit working as a labourer in Paroo’s paddy fields, Kumar says he has spent his life facing “exploitation” by dominant castes, but this “horrifying incident” has left him jolted.

“Dalits are the easiest target for these men,” he says as his eyes well with tears.

The news that a body had been discovered spread quickly that morning. Kumari had rushed to the field, fearing the worst. The family was not allowed near the girl’s body. All they could see was her face as the police whisked her body away.

In the hours that followed, members of the family had to stand up to local Yadav leaders – who they say pushed for a quick cremation – so they could to register a case with the police and get the investigation started.

Family members say they were able to halt the cremation until later that afternoon after the postmortem had been carried out.

Rushing the cremation of a reported rape and murder victim could be an attempt to destroy “the most important evidence”, Shama Sinha, a lawyer who has represented victims of sexual violence in court, including Dalit women, tells Al Jazeera.

Increasing crimes and invisibility

According to a DHRDN study, crimes against Dalits, including murder, rose by 177.6 percent over the three decades from 1991 to 2021.

Annual data from India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows there has been a 50 percent increase in murders of Dalits from 651 to 975 from 2012 to 2022, the latest year for which data are available . Bihar has been the second most affected state.

The Indian government does not maintain separate data for crimes against Dalit women and girls such as murder, gang rape and rape with murder. However, NCRB data show a 169 percent increase in reported rapes of Dalit women nationally from 2012 (when there were 1,576 cases) to 2022 (when there were 4,241 cases). An average of  10 Dalit women and girls are reported raped every day.

Pradeep of the DHRDN, a lawyer with more than 30 years of experience navigating cases of violence against women, believes the increase in reported rape partly reflects the growing social mobility of Dalit women.

“The subcastes within Dalits who have been able to climb the economic ladder and assert their rights are also increasingly able to register a complaint,” she says. Even then, she says, the numbers are a “vast undercount”.

Dalit families’ economic reliance on landlords “prevents a lot of complaints”, Pradeep says.

She says crimes against Dalits are often rendered “invisible” due to the community’s disadvantaged social standing.

Sinha, who has spent more than two decades travelling across rural Bihar to run camps to raise awareness about legal rights, agrees.

Fear of retribution is a major factor in low reporting of crimes, she says, “because the next day, these families still have to live in the same village and face the same social dynamics”.

For Dalit women who experience gender discrimination on top of the economic and caste prejudice endured by Dalits, reporting is an even greater challenge.

“The literacy rate is low – 57 percent for Dalit women – and even though there are strong laws in place, there is no awareness and more importantly no agency for [Dalit] women to report [cases] and seek justice,” Sinha says. “Wives still call husbands ‘maalik’,” which is Hindi for “owner”.

This disparity or invisibility extends to representation in media, Pradeep says. “Dalits do not get the same kind of reporting from the media, which could enable social mobilisation.”

The rape and murder of the 31-year-old trainee doctor in Kolkata, a major city in eastern India, prompted nationwide protests and outrage with medical workers in several parts of the country, including Bihar, walking out of hospitals in protest.

There was far less outrage over the murder of the schoolgirl in Paroo although Dalit and women’s rights activists organised protest marches in Bihar.

“Dalit families are left all alone in these times,” Pradeep points out.

On August 19, Rakesh Kumar, the Muzaffarpur district police chief, said at the news conference that police had arrested Rai that morning from a nearby village as well as the four Dalit men.

Kumar said the victim was not abducted but went willingly to meet Rai near her home when they were attacked by the four men who wanted to punish them for having an intercaste relationship.

He said the men then fled and, panicked, Rai then killed the girl, tied her limbs together and left her body in the fields.

“It [the police version] has to be the most absurd explanation behind the case that reeks with a smell of a cover-up,” says Kumari, a local social activist, who spent a week in the village on a fact-finding mission and requested to be identified only by her second name. “This is straight out of a playbook where the entire machinery is rigged against the community.

“I’m not shocked at all to find Dalit men being arrested in this case. That is what mostly happens in our experience. I would not even be shocked if tomorrow the police implicated one of the family members too if they raise their voice.”

Experts also say rape should not be ruled out.

In court, a range of evidence comes into play in sexual violence cases, Sinha says, and “the signs of rape are harder to catch in medical reports with passing time.”

“Spermatozoa not found” – which is what the report says – can never be grounds to dismiss rape, she says.

Sinha adds that police investigations often suffer from improper collection of time-sensitive evidence and a lack of training of police personnel in investigating cases of sexual violence.

Shreya Rastogi, director of forensics at Project 39A, a New Delhi-based research group, says assuming the forensic report is correct, the absence of sperm does not disprove rape.

She says sperm cells degrade, there may not have been ejaculation and the test could have been done improperly but also the absence of sperm cells “means really nothing because so many scenarios could have occurred while there may still have been penetration. … Ruling out rape is completely wrong.”

She continues: “Both legally and medically speaking, ruling out rape just on the basis of absence of sperm is not valid or reliable.”

Al Jazeera tried to reach Rai as well as his family, who left the village before Rai’s arrest. The details of Rai’s legal counsel are not known.

‘Treated like criminals’

Back at Nirali Kumari’s home, a group of local Yadav leaders came to meet the family on August 17 while Al Jazeera was visiting.

She tried to stay conscious for the visitors, who were given chairs to sit on.

“We should not politicise this issue. One person’s doing does not represent the Yadav community at large,” Tulsi Rai, 43, a local Yadav leader who came to visit the family, tells Al Jazeera.

If someone from the Dalit community told him that they were being intimidated by a Yadav family, “we will scare those Yadavs back,” Rai says. “A filthy person like Sanjay does not belong to our community. We have disowned him.”

But soon, teenage boys and men appeared outside the family’s home wearing blue scarves, synonymous with Dalit politics. They interrupted their words of sympathy and called for accountability.

“We have lost our daughter, but I do not trust the police and the administration for justice and our safety,” Nirali Kumari says. “We only have faith in brothers of our caste across India to help us get justice now.”

Dalit activists held small protests in Paroo, which stirred fear among Dalit families of a backlash from the dominant caste. Then, on the evening of August 18, the Kumari family was forced to flee the village.

Nirali Kumari says they left behind an unlocked home and all their belongings – including a “hard-earned” bicycle, clothing and food – and “ran for our lives” when, the family says, dominant caste members wielding weapons started ransacking Dalit homes.

“If you survive – come back someday to collect your belongings,” a neighbour told Nirali.

All of the Dalit families have since fled the village, and their 18 huts are now deserted.

Muzaffarpur police tell Al Jazeera that the investigation is ongoing and a charge sheet has yet to be issued. They did not comment on the Dalit residents fleeing Paroo.

On September 4, Al Jazeera met Nirali Kumari’s family in hiding nearly 100km (62 miles) from their home at a location that is not being disclosed for its safety.

Fifteen family members were sheltering in a small, white-walled room. A devastated Nirali was sitting in a corner.

The family continues to be on the move. “We are a poor family, and now we have no roof over our heads. My heart is sinking,” she says, beating her chest in anger. “I wish I was killed rather than my babu. This life is worthless.

“We are being treated like criminals. My daughter was raped and murdered – but who cares about giving justice to a poor Dalit like me? But we are not the last Dalits in this country, and this story will keep on repeating.”

*Names have been changed

India's "Untouchables" Face Violence, Discrimination

More than 160 million people in India are considered "Untouchable"—people tainted by their birth into a caste system that deems them impure, less than human.

More than 160 million people in India are considered "Untouchable"—people tainted by their birth into a caste system that deems them impure, less than human.

Human rights abuses against these people, known as Dalits, are legion. A random sampling of headlines in mainstream Indian newspapers tells their story: "Dalit boy beaten to death for plucking flowers"; "Dalit tortured by cops for three days"; "Dalit 'witch' paraded naked in Bihar"; "Dalit killed in lock-up at Kurnool"; "7 Dalits burnt alive in caste clash"; "5 Dalits lynched in Haryana"; "Dalit woman gang-raped, paraded naked"; "Police egged on mob to lynch Dalits".

"Dalits are not allowed to drink from the same wells, attend the same temples, wear shoes in the presence of an upper caste, or drink from the same cups in tea stalls," said Smita Narula, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch , and author of Broken People: Caste Violence Against India's "Untouchables." Human Rights Watch is a worldwide activist organization based in New York.

India's Untouchables are relegated to the lowest jobs, and live in constant fear of being publicly humiliated, paraded naked, beaten, and raped with impunity by upper-caste Hindus seeking to keep them in their place. Merely walking through an upper-caste neighborhood is a life-threatening offense.

Nearly 90 percent of all the poor Indians and 95 percent of all the illiterate Indians are Dalits, according to figures presented at the International Dalit Conference that took place May 16 to 18 in Vancouver, Canada.

Crime Against Dalits

Statistics compiled by India's National Crime Records Bureau indicate that in the year 2000, the last year for which figures are available, 25,455 crimes were committed against Dalits. Every hour two Dalits are assaulted; every day three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits are murdered, and two Dalit homes are torched.

No one believes these numbers are anywhere close to the reality of crimes committed against Dalits. Because the police, village councils, and government officials often support the caste system, which is based on the religious teachings of Hinduism, many crimes go unreported due to fear of reprisal, intimidation by police, inability to pay bribes demanded by police, or simply the knowledge that the police will do nothing.

"There have been large-scale abuses by the police, acting in collusion with upper castes, including raids, beatings in custody, failure to charge offenders or investigate reported crimes," said Narula.

That same year, 68,160 complaints were filed against the police for activities ranging from murder, torture, and collusion in acts of atrocity, to refusal to file a complaint. Sixty two percent of the cases were dismissed as unsubstantiated; 26 police officers were convicted in court.

Despite the fact that untouchability was officially banned when India adopted its constitution in 1950, discrimination against Dalits remained so pervasive that in 1989 the government passed legislation known as The Prevention of Atrocities Act. The act specifically made it illegal to parade people naked through the streets, force them to eat feces, take away their land, foul their water, interfere with their right to vote, and burn down their homes.

Since then, the violence has escalated, largely as a result of the emergence of a grassroots human rights movement among Dalits to demand their rights and resist the dictates of untouchability, said Narula.

Lack of Enforcement, Not Laws

Enforcement of laws designed to protect Dalits is lax if not non-existent in many regions of India. The practice of untouchability is strongest in rural areas, where 80 percent of the country's population resides. There, the underlying religious principles of Hinduism dominate.

Hindus believe a person is born into one of four castes based on karma and "purity"—how he or she lived their past lives. Those born as Brahmans are priests and teachers; Kshatriyas are rulers and soldiers; Vaisyas are merchants and traders; and Sudras are laborers. Within the four castes, there are thousands of sub-castes, defined by profession, region, dialect, and other factors.

Untouchables are literally outcastes; a fifth group that is so unworthy it doesn't fall within the caste system.

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Although based on religious principles practiced for some 1,500 years, the system persists today for economic as much as religious reasons.

Because they are considered impure from birth, Untouchables perform jobs that are traditionally considered "unclean" or exceedingly menial, and for very little pay. One million Dalits work as manual scavengers, cleaning latrines and sewers by hand and clearing away dead animals. Millions more are agricultural workers trapped in an inescapable cycle of extreme poverty, illiteracy, and oppression.

Although illegal, 40 million people in India, most of them Dalits, are bonded workers, many working to pay off debts that were incurred generations ago, according to a report by Human Rights Watch published in 1999. These people, 15 million of whom are children, work under slave-like conditions hauling rocks, or working in fields or factories for less than U.S. $1 day.

Crimes Against Women

Dalit women are particularly hard hit. They are frequently raped or beaten as a means of reprisal against male relatives who are thought to have committed some act worthy of upper-caste vengeance. They are also subject to arrest if they have male relatives hiding from the authorities.

A case reported in 1999 illustrates the toxic mix of gender and caste.

A 42-year-old Dalit woman was gang-raped and then burnt alive after she, her husband, and two sons had been held in captivity and tortured for eight days. Her crime? Another son had eloped with the daughter of the higher-caste family doing the torturing. The local police knew the Dalit family was being held, but did nothing because of the higher-caste family's local influence.

There is very little recourse available to victims.

A report released by Amnesty International in 2001 found an "extremely high" number of sexual assaults on Dalit women, frequently perpetrated by landlords, upper-caste villagers, and police officers. The study estimates that only about 5 percent of attacks are registered, and that police officers dismissed at least 30 percent of rape complaints as false.

The study also found that the police routinely demand bribes, intimidate witnesses, cover up evidence, and beat up the women's husbands. Little or nothing is done to prevent attacks on rape victims by gangs of upper-caste villagers seeking to prevent a case from being pursued. Sometimes the policemen even join in, the study suggests. Rape victims have also been murdered. Such crimes often go unpunished.

Thousands of pre-teen Dalit girls are forced into prostitution under cover of a religious practice known as devadasis , which means "female servant of god." The girls are dedicated or "married" to a deity or a temple. Once dedicated, they are unable to marry, forced to have sex with upper-caste community members, and eventually sold to an urban brothel.

Resistance and Progress

Within India, grassroots efforts to change are emerging, despite retaliation and intimidation by local officials and upper-caste villagers. In some states, caste conflict has escalated to caste warfare, and militia-like vigilante groups have conducted raids on villages, burning homes, raping, and massacring the people. These raids are sometimes conducted with the tacit approval of the police.

In the province Bihar, local Dalits are retaliating, committing atrocities also. Non-aligned Dalits are frequently caught in the middle, victims of both groups.

"There is a growing grassroots movement of activists, trade unions, and other NGOs that are organizing to democratically and peacefully demand their rights, higher wages, and more equitable land distribution," said Narula. "There has been progress in terms of building a human rights movement within India, and in drawing international attention to the issue."

In August 2002, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UN CERD) approved a resolution condemning caste or descent-based discrimination.

"But at the national level, very little is being done to implement or enforce the laws," said Narula.

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Nature and Trends of Crime against Dalits

Dalits have had a long history of subordination and have been victims of both direct and structural violence. This has, however, also led to the emergence of Dalit movements for self-respect and assertion of their rights. Despite constitutional and legislative safeguards for their rights, cases of violence against Dalits persist. An analysis of the rate of crime against Dalits in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh, based on the statistics available in the National Crime Records Bureau reports of 2017–21, reveals that the frequency and intensity of crimes is inversely proportional to the degree of resistance mounted by the Dalits.

Social stratification in India is based on caste, which is o ne of the important sources of ascribed identity. The prevailing c oncept of “purity” and “pollution” kept a section of the population at the lowest rung of the social hierarchy (Sing h et al 2023), who are also known as untouchables, Avarna, Cha ndals , and by many other names at different points of time. Through the Government of India (GoI) Act, 1935, an attempt was made to group them as Scheduled Castes (SCs) (Singh and Ziyauddin 2010; Singh and Soam 2022). These castes have been victims of hegemonic Brahminical constructs for centuries and suffered from both “direct violence” and “structural violence” (Gultang 1990). They historically faced atrocities in terms of exploitation, marginalisation, detention, and so on.  These still persist, despite the introduction of many protective measures, both in terms of preventive statutes and affirmative action programmes, for their socio-economic and cultural development. 

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