On Monday night, limping and bleeding, 18-year-old Sahil reached his home in Ballabhgarh’s Subash Colony in Faridabad. He was unable to speak.
Seeing the state of her brother — with his head tonsured and the hair on his face shaved off — his 13-year-old sister fainted. A crowd gathered and helped the teenager onto the bed of his single-room house as his mother, who had been frantically looking for him, ran home.
“He could not say what happened because he was injured and traumatised,” said his father, Pritam Kumar (44).
It was later that the family pieced together what happened — Sahil said he had been attacked, allegedly by his friend, who later left him near the house.
On Wednesday, after his cousin, Suraj (32), lodged a complaint, the Faridabad Police arrested the 19-year-old prime accused and apprehended two of his minor accomplices. Another person involved in the assault is on the run, police said.
The family alleged the accused had hurled casteist slurs at Sahil. In his complaint, Suraj alleged the four accused “kept the teenager hostage in a room… cut his hair, eyebrows, moustache and beard, turned him upside down and beat him with sticks and an iron rod…”
Police, however, said there is no caste angle. They said Sahil and the accused had known each other for 8 years, and the latter wanted “to teach the teen a lesson” due to a dispute between the two.
The FIR, though, invokes the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act among other charges. Sahil’s family is from the Jatav caste.
At a ward in Badshah Khan Civil Hospital on Thursday, where Sahil is undergoing treatment, his mother, Bimlesh (34), who works as a cook at small eateries, said the main accused came by at 4 pm on Monday; he wanted her son to come to his home. “When Sahil did not return after three hours, I went looking for him. (The accused) and the others told me he wasn’t with them.”
Suraj, who is a member of the Bhim Army and Azad Samaj Party, scolded Sahil for sanitising the incident. “Main usse samjha nahi paaya (I could not make him understand)… What is the need to shield the culprits?”
On the police’s claim that the incident was not motivated by caste, Suraj alleged, “For a simple tiff, would you shave someone’s head and beat them hard with sticks?”
He said even the day before the assault, the accused had allegedly beaten up Sahil.
Asked about this incident, Sahil told The Indian Express, “They slapped me and put me in the boot of a car, but let me go later.”
He pulled down the blanket to show his bandaged leg. There were scars on his head and red and black marks on his back below his waist.
As per the FIR, the medico-legal report found the teen had sustained 12 wounds, 10 of which were blunt force impact ones needing orthopaedic assessment, and two ‘simple’ ones caused by a sharp object. A doctor on duty at the civil hospital said, “We have sent his X-ray scans to check for bone injuries. We are awaiting the reports.”
Bhim Army’s Haryana president, Kamal Barara, also met the family and asked the teen to recall his ordeal. Barara and Suraj called up the Ballabhgarh ACP and demanded that the police record Sahil’s statement again in the presence of his family and provide them police protection.
Naming six persons as accused, police lodged the FIR under BNS sections of voluntarily causing grievous hurt using dangerous weapons/means, wrongful confinement, theft, and criminal intimidation, apart from Section 3 of the SC/ST Act.
“We recorded the teen’s statement with his family around. We’ll speak to him again when needed. All allegations will be examined during the probe,” ACP (Ballabhgarh) Mahesh Sheoran said.
Sahil is the eldest of three siblings.
Pritam, who works in a metal workshop, said he never spoke about the main accused and his gang, or about any troubles they gave him. “He was a typical kid of his age, he would be on the phone when free or hang out with his friends. He dropped out of school after Class 4 and found work at a motorcycle repair shop. Until recently, he was working in a private woodworks shop. But he lost the job as he would arrive late.”
“We have never faced any threats or other issues in the many decades that we have lived here; we hail from Ballabgarh,” the father added.
Sahil’s parents demanded justice to ensure no one else meets his fate. Pritam said, “They (the accused) should be jailed. Others in the neighbourhood will then know this is wrong.”
According to police, the main accused hatched a plan to attack Sahil, who was once his close friend, "to teach him a lesson" due to the ongoing disputes between the two. 
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