Dalit boy death: Activists demand home minister’s resignation

A group of Mumbai-based social activists, lawyers and senior journalists, who recently visited Kharda village in Ahmednagar following a 17-year old Dalit boy’s brutal killing, have demanded state Home Minister R R Patil’s resignation. On April 28, Nitin Aage was allegedly killed and then hanged from a tree for being in a relationship with a minor girl from an upper caste.

The police have arrested 13 people, including a minor. “With three incidents of honour killing which claimed five lives in Ahmednagar recently, it is high time that the home minister takes responsibility and resigns,” said Subodh More of the Vidrohi Sanskrutic Chalwal. In a ten-point demand made by the fact finding committee, which includes activists Arun Feriera, Shyam Sonar; senior journalists Pratima Joshi, Jatin Desai and lawyer Shabana Khan, they have demanded declaring Ahmednagar as an ‘atrocity prone district’.