If horses had wishes…

As the incident led to outrage, coming as it did in the midst of the Lok Sabha elections, and in the wake of several such attacks in the state, the Gujarat government acted swiftly to book 45 Patidars and a mob of around 150 under various provisions of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and the IPC.

As the stone pelting began, Yuvraj bolted with the groom, thus saving him. (Express photo by Javed Raja)

Thirteen days later, Yuvraj, whose wounds from the stone-pelting were discovered late, died. All the accused remain absconding.

The family of Jayesh Rathod had hired Yuvraj for Rs 9,500, says Chauhan. Along with his three brothers, the 50-year-old Chauhan, who belongs to the Thakor-Kshatriya caste group, runs the family trade of hiring out horses for weddings. Together they own eight horses, and after Yuvraj’s death, Chauhan is left with three. “None of them is as beautiful or active as Yuvraj was. I am suffering losses with Yuvraj gone,” Chauhan says.

According to him, other families in his village of Vanta-Rampur too are in similar business and provide horses for various occasions.

That day, Chauhan adds, he hadn’t been well and so while he accompanied Yuvraj to Khambhisar, around 4 km away, he took along three nephews to attend to the horse. He did not anticipate any trouble, he adds.
“But, as soon as we reached Khambhisar, some Patels threatened us to leave. They said that if we do not go back, neither we nor our horse would survive. We got frightened and headed for the Khambhisar bus stop, but the Dalit family reassured us that they had got police protection and nothing would happen to us. So we went with them,” Chauhan says.

Despite the police presence though, there was heavy stone-pelting on the wedding procession. “One after the other, three alternative routes taken (by the Dalits) were blocked by the Patidars. They first cut off the power supply. I overheard somebody ordering this while I sat in my car near the village dairy, as my nephews attended the wedding with Yuvraj,” claims Chauhan.

As soon as he heard about the stone-pelting, he phoned one of his nephews to run away with Yuvraj, he adds. The horse bolted with the groom, thus saving him. “While running with the horse, some Patidar youths chased my nephews to attack them too,” Chauhan says.

They eventually made their way home late in the night. It was only when they removed the finery put on Yuvraj for the wedding that they realised that his head was covered in blood. Since it was very late by then, Chauhan provided Yuvraj some primary treatment and took him to Government Veterinary Hospital in nearby Berna village the next morning.

Chauhan buried Yuvraj in Vanta-Rampur’s grazing land. (Express photo by Javed Raja)

It took seven stitches to close the wound. “The doctor also prescribed five injections and a spray. However, Yuvraj could not recover,” says Chauhan. He could read the signs, he adds. “Horses never sit if there is the slightest movement by man or animals nearby. On May 25, he fell down, and I realised he was gone.”

Chauhan says he wanted to bury Yuvraj on the ground in front of his one-storey house. “But doctors advised me not to bury it there since the horse’s body had been cut open for post-mortem.” So Chauhan buried him in the Vanta-Rampur village’s grazing land.

The post-mortem attributed the death to the head injury.

After Yuvraj’s death, police added Section 429 of the IPC — mischief by killing or maiming of cattle — against the accused. Deputy Superintendent of Police S S Gadhvi, who is investigating the case, says police are trying to trace the 45 accused, and that a search of the village hadn’t yielded anything. A district court has rejected the anticipatory bail petitions filed by 43 of them.

Chauhan says he will never provide a horse to Khambhisar now. “Is this how people treat an animal? We have been providing horses to people of all castes in the region. But we never experienced such brutal behaviour. Yuvraj had a two-inch deep wound. It was so deep because of the sharp-edged stones used in the stone-pelting.”

The Rathods say they want to compensate Chauhan for his loss. Eight of the family suffered injuries in the stone-pelting that day, on their head, chest, legs, back, stomach. The wedding went on as scheduled, and was completed the next day, under heavy police bandobast.

While the groom, Jayesh, 25, works for Dakshin Gujarat Vij Company Limited as a meter reader in Surat, his 24-year-old bride, Palak, is enrolled for B.Ed.

Says Dahyabhai Rathod, Jayesh’s father, “We feel really bad that an innocent animal lost its life during our ceremony. The primary target of the stone-pelting was my son.”