Dalit

Gujarat

Ahmedabad

Junagadh

Rajpipla

Pending cases

The 13-year-oldboy who was beaten up on Wednesday in Becharaji for “posing as an upper caste Darbar community member” is in for a long fight. And so is the family of the scrap-picker in Rajkot who was thrashed till his innards turned to pulp, and the youth from Dholka who faced the fury of the upper caste for suffixing his name with ‘Sinh’. For, the redressal mechanism which the state government had put in place for justice to the Dalit community has failed to deliver.According to data fromHigh Court till December 31last year, there are 3,879 atrocity cases pending at various stages of trial in 56 special courts, 16 of which were set up after the Una flogging incident, across 33 districts in Gujarat.tops the list, followed by Kutch, Banaskantha, Bhavnagar, Surat and Patan. All of them have more than 200 cases pending in courts. Ahmedabad courts, both rural and city sessions, have 485 pending cases. Besides these, there are 11 districts which have more than 100 pending cases.The Veraval court in Gir-Somnath district, where the Una flogging case of 2016 and Ankolali burning case of 2012 took place, has 122 pending cases, while the court in Surendranagar, which witnessed the Thangadh firing incident in 2012, has 129. There are as many as 110 cases pending incourt, which include the case with the largest number of accused—Keshod community clash of 1999 that happened in the aftermath of a rape.court of Narmada district has the lowest number of pending cases at 11, followed by Vyara court in Tapi district with 13 and the Mahisagar district court, also in Rajpipla, with 17 cases. There are 13 districts where the pending cases are in double digits.“When this court was established last year in the aftermath of the Una thrashing in 2016, a total of 250 cases were assigned here. Of those, the court has disposed of 120, which is the highest in Gujarat. However conviction happened in only three of them—one each of murder, rape and grievous hurt,” said Manisha Sendar, special public prosecutor for the Ahmedabad Special Atrocity Court. “In the remaining cases, the accused and victims reached compromises,” she said.Explaining the trend, she said, “While the victims promise to fight to the end, it is only when they become hostile that we realise that they have reached a settlement, often monetary, with the accused. Many victims later tell us that since they are neighbours or are in minority in areas populated by higher castes, it was in their best interests to reach a settlement and withdraw the cases.”She clarified that compromises do not happen in serious cases like rape and murder. Currently, there are about 15 atrocity cases related to murder that are under trial at the Ahmedabad sessions court. Three of these are awaiting judgment, Sendar shared.“Regular courts are given additional work of special atrocity courts. Secondly, if the court does not have the capacity to deal with the number of cases it gets, pendency increases. Thirdly, several false cases are filed. This leads to delay in hearing of genuine cases of atrocity. These are besides the usual reasons for delay like absence of complainant, witnesses, lawyers or judge,” said Judge (retd) OL Pandey, Former Law Secretary, Gujarat. Dalit rights activist and founder of Navsarjan Trust Martin Mackwan agreed that police and judiciary tend to take cases lightly due to high number of false complaints.“There are cases which are pending because proceedings have been stayed for 5-7 years. Also, there is so much work load on the police and judiciary that they are unable to process all of it because of lack of infrastructure development,” he added. Lack of courts exclusively for atrocity cases plays a major role in the high pendency of cases, opined Dalit activist and Vadgam MLA Jignesh Mevani.“In Una case, the trial has not begun even after two years and the accused are out on bail. The state government is not doing anything to ensure the trial is completed. This sends a message to non-Dalits and non-tribals that the accused will never be punished. The government feels it can get away with paying compensation but what we really want is social justice,” he added. Advocate Govind Parmar felt the judiciary was biased towards the accused in atrocity cases.“In one case, the accused who was out on bail wrote a suicide note blaming the victim of atrocity, yet his bail was not cancelled. Similarly, the Una case accused attacked the Sarvaiya family while out on bail,” Parmar said. HC advocate Anand Yagnik suggested that there could be remedial action beyond the laws too “like elected representatives reaching out to victims in a show of solidarity, so that such attacks do not happen again. The police, the government and the opposition need to take this into account.”