Belagavi court sentences 12 people to 5 years in prison for stripping and parading Dalit woman

The woman was assaulted after her 24-year-old son ran away with the 18-year-old woman, whose marriage to another man was arranged by her family, in December 2023.

2 min readBengaluruUpdated: Feb 4, 2026 09:56 PM IST

The Karnataka Government handed over the case to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on December 16, 2023.

A local court in Karnataka’s Belagavi on Wednesday sentenced 12 people to five years rigorous imprisonment for stripping, parading, and assaulting a 42-year-old Dalit woman in 2023.

On Tuesday, the court convicted Basappa, 45; Raju, 52; Kempanna, 52; Parvathi, 37; Yellavva, 67; Lakkappa, 26; Gangavva, 62; Sangeetha, 35; Santosh, 21; Shobha, 49; Lakkavva, 42, and Shivappa, 53, all residents of the Hosa Vantamuri village in the Belagavi district.

The woman was stripped, paraded naked, tied to an electric pole, and publicly assaulted in Hosa Vantamuri village, 9 km from Belagavi, early on December 11, 2023, by several members of a family in the village after her son eloped with their daughter.

The woman’s 24-year-old son ran away with the 18-year-old woman, whose marriage to another man was arranged by her family, which was scheduled for December 11. Both families belong to the same tribal community; the woman’s family opposed their relationship because the man’s family was not “affluent” and his father was an “outsider”.

The incident occurred during the Karnataka Assembly session, and soon the Opposition attacked the Congress government.

The Karnataka Government handed over the case to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on December 16, 2023. Then CID SP (Special Enquiry) Pruthvik Shankar and his team completed the probe and submitted the charge sheet on April 22, 2024, within 133 days, before a court, citing 92 witnesses and producing 37 seized articles exhibits in support of the prosecution case.

Considering the gravity of the incident, the Karnataka High Court initiated suo motu proceedings in a writ petition and passed orders directing the competent court to complete the trial expeditiously within a period of one year.

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Meanwhile, the government allocated two acres of land to the victim under the Land Ownership Scheme by the Karnataka Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation.

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