UP: Dalit Men Beaten, Paraded With Shoes Around Their Neck

In the video clip, Hannu Basor can be seen getting kicked and manhandled by Sunil Tiwari, who was upset as the sarpanch had hoisted the tricolour during the Independence Day function in his absence (Representational pic)

In a grim reminder of the 2016 Una flogging incident, three oppressed caste men were tied up, beaten, forcefully tonsured and paraded with shoes hung around their necks in Lucknow’s Barauli Khalilabad village.

The incident happened on June 4 after the three men – one belonging to the OBC and the other two belonging to Scheduled Castes – were allegedly caught stealing a fan from the house of a ‘Brahmin man’, the local police said.

“After the family caught the three men, other villagers also gathered and soon, the mob started thrashing them. To humiliate them further, they shaved their heads abruptly and paraded them around the village with shoes hung around their neck,” said PGI police station in-charge KK Mishra.

Mishra said cases have been registered against both the parties. “The three men have been arrested on charges of theft and two of the accused who publicly humiliated them have also been arrested under various sections of the IPC and SC/ST Act. We are looking at videos and photographs to identify the others.”

Meanwhile, Bhim Army chief Chandra Shekhar Azad shared a video of the incident and tweeted saying, “it was a reminder of the Una flogging incident.” In 2016, seven members of a Dalit family were publicly assaulted by a group of people on the pretext of ‘cow protection’ in Gujarat’s Una. When the video of the incident went viral, it led to massive protests across the country against caste discrimination.

This is the second major incident of atrocities against Dalits being reported from Uttar Pradesh in a week. On June 6, a 17-year-old Dalit boy was shot dead in UP’s Amroha district allegedly after he got embroiled in a dispute over entry into a temple in his village.