Hisar, April 29: AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi paid an unannounced short visit this afternoon to Mirchpur village where arsoning and attacks on Dalits had claimed two lives recently, and assured the aggrieved Valmiki community of all possible help and stringent action against guilty.
An argument over a barking dog in the street led to one of the most violent clash that Haryana has seen.On April 21, 15 houses belonging to the village’s Dalits were set on fire by the upper caste Jats. The incident of violence witnessed a physically challenged girl and her 70 year-old-father being burnt alive. The attackers, allegedly from the Jat community, identified houses of the more well-off among the Balmiki community and set them on fire. The mood in the village was that dalits ‘need to be taught a lesson’.
The young Congress leader took the authorities by surprise as he disembarked from his private vehicle and made straight to the cluster of houses burnt down in the arson.
Located in Hissar district, Mirchpur has a handful of dalits: about 100 Balmiki families, 350 ‘Jatav’ families and 50 Doms to the 1700-odd Jat families. The team found that growing economic prosperity among a section of the minority dalits seemed to be the root cause this time around.He remained in the village for about half an hour with the aggrieved families and specially sympathised with the bereaved family of Tara Chand and Suman. He also observed a two-minute silence to pray for the departed souls.
The Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) has been demanding the resignation of the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government for its failure in preventing the Mirchpur incident. The party said Hooda has no moral or democratic right to stay in power after the incident in which houses of Dalits were torched resulting in the death of a disabled girl and her father. The party said the incident was a blot on the government and was enough to prove that there was “jungle raj” in the state. Police arrested 25 people for the incident and said the attack was due to an old enmity between the two communities.
—Agencies