Ten days after a Dalit youth was found dead in Gujarat’s Amreli district, Congress MLA Jignesh Mewani on Tuesday sought the immediate suspension of the superintendent of police (SP) of the district after it came to light that the victim had allegedly sought police protection. Mewani also demanded the body of the victim be exhumed and an in-camera post-mortem is conducted. “A few days ago, Arvind Parmar, a resident of Boila village of Savarkundla taluka in Amreli district, had made a video and posted on social media saying that he would be murdered in the coming days. The video in which Parmar sought police protection was also sent to the superintendent of police of Amreli district. Despite this, no police protection was provided,” Mewani said, adding that the youth had even called the SP in this regard. During the media interaction held at the Congress headquarters in the city, Mewani also played an audio track where the youth could purportedly be heard voicing concerns about his safety. “Despite a phone call, the SP asked the youth to go to the nearest police station or call police control. He should have ideally directed his junior officials to ensure the safety of the youth or acted against the suspects. The result of this inaction is that Parmar has been murdered,” Mewani alleged. The Congress MLA from Vadgam sought that Parmar’s body, which was found on July 21 and subsequently buried, should be exhumed. He also sought that further investigation and post-mortem should be held in-camera and the investigations should be handed over to Premsukh Delu, the SP of Jamnagar district. “The police should have ideally conducted a postmortem. But as the SP had not initiated any action in this regard, the Savarkundla police conducted the final rites without a postmortem. I demand that the concerned official be immediately suspended and be booked under the Atrocities Act or else we will stage a strong public protest,” he added. Mewani also cited seven-odd cases of attacks on Dalits in Rajkot, Surendranagar, Bhavnagar, Botad and Ahmedabad. “A few days ago, two brothers from the Dalit community living in Samadhiyala village in Surendranagar were killed despite them writing letters to the chief minister and others seeking police protection… Similarly, a young girl was raped and murdered in Naroda (Ahmedabad) a few days ago. More than 15 days have passed and nobody has been booked or arrested for the crime,” he said. Mewani also demanded that the Naroda case be handed over to IPS officer Sujata Majmudar. “Let upright officials handle such cases,” he added. Alleging that the “BJP-RSS government in Gujarat has given a free hand to those wanting to kill Dalits”, Mewani said that no preventive action was taken nor was police protection provided. “This means that 50 lakh Dalits in Gujarat have no value for this government,” he remarked. The BJP government is yet to react on the issue.
