A 42-year-old widow from a scheduled caste (SC) community has alleged that she was kept naked at a police station in Punjab, not provided food or water and brutalised. This illegal detention of the SC (aka ‘Dalit’) woman by police happened on March 22, two days after a theft took place at a Sikh household where she works.

Punjab state scheduled caste (SC) commission has now ordered the Sangrur police to conduct a probe into the matter. The woman had appeared before the commission during a Lok Adalat held at the district administrative complex on Thursday.

“Khanauri station house officer (SHO), inspector Malwinder Singh, took me to the police station and thrashed me. A female cop forcefully removed my clothes, and hit me with sticks on the directions of the SHO. They had locked me up in the police station without food and water. They released me the next evening after my brother, nephew and panchayat members intervened,” the woman told the commission.

Commission member Chandreshwar Singh Mohi, said, “The victim said the SHO had tortured her so as to get her to confess to a crime she did not commit. I also called the SHO to the Lok Adalat and asked him to present evidence of his innocence, but he failed to do so.”

“The village sarpanch and panchayat members have testified to the atrocities faced by the victim as she was released after their intervention. I have also recorded the statement of the SHO. After hearing both sides, I have directed Sangrur police to conduct a probe and submit its report to the commission,” said Mohi.

Inspector Malwinder Singh denied the allegations and said, “I was also present before the commission when the woman made these allegations. All her claims are baseless.”

Bhagwan Valmiki welfare society president Raju Gagat, said, “I went to the police station for the release of the woman after her relative approached me. We had also lodged a complaint with the then SSP but no action has been taken by the police so far. Therefore, we approached the commission.” From this, it would seem that the maid is from a Hindu SC community seeing that Bhagwan Valmiki welfare society intervened on her behalf.

Deputy superintendent of police Moonak Baljinder Singh, said, “The victim had given a complaint in this regard and investigation is already underway in the matter. The victim’s employers had accused her of the theft.”

HinduPost spoke to the Khanauri SHO. He denied the allegations while confirming that the goods were reported stolen from a Sikh household, which have not been recovered as yet.

However, such is the anti-Hindu hate of neo-Ambedkarite groups that a verified twitter handle ‘The Dalit Voice’ misrepresented the case by tweeting that the maid was arrested by police under pressure from the “caste Hindu community”.

The theft occurred in a Sikh household, so it is obvious that they would have lodged the complaint and pressurized police to question the maid. But any crime that has a possible class/jaati motivation is twisted by such neo-Abedkarite/radical Dalit outfits to pin the blame on ‘upper caste Hindus’. Even if the perpetrator is from an OBC community and the victim SC, they will blame ‘caste Hindus’, although later they will consider that same OBC part of ‘bahujan’ samaj to whip up hatred for general category Hindus.

The handle’s twitter bio says “Campaigns against the Atrocities, Caste-based Slavery, Caste & Gender Discrimination and Poverty that over 260M Dalits suffer due to casteism. @projectsavitri“, and it has a website too.

Punjab is home to the highest concentration of SC communities in Bharat, with both Hindu SC and Sikh SC (aka Mazhabi Sikh). SCs constitute almost 32% of Punjab’s total population and 4.3% of the SCs nationally. The biggest SC communities in Punjab are Mazhabi Sikhs at 31.5%, Ravidasia Hindus and the Ramdasia Sikhs at 26% (former Punjab CM Channi is official a Ramdasia Sikh although some evidence suggests that he is in fact a crypto Christian), Ad Dharmis (15%), Valmiki Hindus (11%).

Jat Sikhs, though only 20% of the state’s population are the dominant community in the rigid feudal order and majorly control the agrarian economy.

Social discrimination against SCs is arguably the highest in Punjab, as we saw in the horrific mutilation and lynching of Lakhbir Singh at Singhu border and the nonchalant way in which Nihang Sikhs and various gurudwaras defended that barbarity in the name of ‘beadbi’ (sacrilege). The contempt for people of UP and Bihar, many of whom work as migrant agricultural laborers for the rich farmers of Punjab, was also very apparent during the anti-farm law stir, with one common (albeit misinformed) refrain being ‘Modi wants to reduce our status to UP/Bihar farmers’. Such supremacism and resultant discrimination is one reason for the unscrupulous evangelical missionary mafia mushrooming all over the state. Bible colleges in Punjab are now training missionaries to spread their bigotry and anti-Dharmic venom in other parts of the country.

Here are some recent cases of anti-SC violence that have been reported from Sangrur alone:

1.) March, 2021: Sarpanch Gurnam Singh of a village in Sangrur and three others were booked for parading three SC children with their hands tied to their backs, for around 4km after they were accused of stealing Rs 250 from a dargah (Muslim tomb).

2.) July 2020: Under pressure from Sikh clergy, Punjab Police book ten-year-old SC girl for ‘sacrilege’

3.) May 2020: Four cops booked for torturing SC cousins in police station in Sangrur

4.) Nov 2019: SC man Jagmail Singh dies after being tied to a pillar, beaten and forced to drink urine in Sangrur district.

5.) Sept 2017: 4 SC women attacked by ‘upper-caste’ men in Sangrur over a waste dumping site near a village gurdwara.

Targeting of SCs and members of sects like Dera Sacha Sauda on charges of sacrilege against Sikh Dharma is quite common in Punjab – Balwinder Kaur, Manohar Lal Arora, Mohinder Pal Bittu are some of those who have been murdered in the last few years.