Recent events around the national capital graphically show how expendable the lives of the poor can be, and how calm and complacent the attitude of those in authority when the poor are trifled with, humiliated, or killed.
Just weeks after a lynch mob killed a Muslim ironsmith in Dadri in UP’s Greater Noida on the outskirts of Delhi after alleging cow slaughter, in a Haryana corner of the National Capital Region, at Sundeh village in Faridabad district, some upper-caste men bolted a dalit’s house and ignited it with petrol, killing two — a nine-month-old infant and a three-year-old child.
It took Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar three days to visit the poor man’s home and he was confronted by angry village folk. Apart from the usual promise of catching the guilty, his homily was not to politicise the issue as he said the incident was not an example of caste violence.
Mr Khattar clearly shows poor leadership. By ruling out caste violence, he could be instrumental in getting at least some of the accused off the hook. Civil society must be wide awake and ensure that the accused are booked under sections of the law in keeping with the gravity and context of the crime.
Former Army Chief V.K. Singh has become a motormouth. His take on the Haryana crime against the weak is that the Centre cannot be chasing after every case of a stone being thrown at a dog.
