Five detained for ‘assaulting’ Dalit youth in Vadodara

A video of the incident has surfaced on social media which shows seven men assaulting 24-year-old Alpesh Parmar (Vankar) with a leather belt and sticks when he he was sitting with a friend. The police have identified five of the men seen in the video as Parampir Madansinh Rathod, Pratap Prakash Makwan, Tushar Bharat Solanki, Ajay Aarsinh Ninama and Mahipal Ronak Chavda — all residents of Vadodara city. The police on Thursday evening detained the five accused, who will be formally arrested after a Covid-19 test.
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An FIR filed at the Taluka Police station of Vadodara district on Wednesday states that at around 3.30 pm on December 11, Alpesh Parmar (Vankar) was having a conversation with a female friend belonging to an upper caste community along the Narmada canal on Bhayli-Sevasi road along, when the seven men arrived, armed with sticks and leather belts and began thrashing the complainant.

The FIR note says, “The seven accused picked up an argument with the complainant on the pretext that he had made unpleasant comments on their social media accounts… Soon, the accused began thrashing the complainant and making casteist abuses. The complainant has suffered injuries on his arms, legs, back as well as his head. The accused also threatened to kill the complainant if he approached the police,” the FIR mentioned.

The FIR also states that after the video of the assault — allegedly filmed by the accused themselves to “send out a message to others” — became viral on social media, Parmar’s family and community members urged him to approach the police, following which, he submitted his complaint on Wednesday.

The accused, however, have told the police that they had arrived at the spot allegedly at the insistence of the woman named by the complainant as a friend.

Vadodara Superintendent of Police Rohan Anand said, “The accused have claimed that the woman is a social-media influencer. They have claimed that the complainant had made some advances towards the woman, which she had denied and thereafter, he had made unpleasant comments on her social media posts. The accused and the complainant, allegedly, had an argument on the comment section of the woman’s post. The accused claim that the woman had called them for help on the day as the complainant allegedly followed her to the location… We are yet to verify the facts to ascertain this version.”

The accused have been booked under IPC sections for unlawful assembly (143), rioting (147), every member of an unlawful assembly guilty of the prosecution of the common object (149), Punishment for voluntarily causing hurt (323), criminal intimidation [506(2)] and uttering obscene words in a public place [294(B)] as well as sections of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

On Thursday, Vadgam Congress MLA Jignesh Mevani took to Twitter and recalled the Una flogging incident and said, “When the Una incident took place, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said, ‘Kill me if you want, but do not harm my Dalit brothers’. But, the administration has not been able to ensure that such incidents are not repeated again.”