The father of the 17-year-old Dalit youth who was brutally murdered allegedly for talking to an upper caste girl in a village in Ahmadnagar district has said the culprits should be punished the way his son was tortured. The family of Nitin Aage of Kharda village in Jamkhed tehsil of Ahmadnagar district, who was brutally beaten by some upper caste village men, including the brother of the girl, has asked if the killing was about the honour, why was the girl spared. On Monday morning, when Nitin had gone to his school to attend his preparatory classes for HSC, he was stopped at the school gate and beaten up. He was later taken to a brick kiln where he was beaten again and severe burn injuries inflicted on him. The suspects then strangled him and hung his body to a tree near a field. The post mortem report has shown that Aage’s body has burn injuries on his private parts and his face was brutally thrashed. On Tuesday, the police arrested two men, the girl’s brother Sachin Golekar (21) and his uncle. One minor boy was also detained. On Wednesday the police nabbed seven more persons and were questioning them. Raju Aage, a labourer at a stone crusher unit, said, “My son never had any quarrel with anyone in the village. He went to school everyday and was learning motor repairing at a local garage. Two days before the incident, he told his mother that the girl asked him to marry her. They may have been talking to each other. But my wife told him that we were not equals and that he should stay away.” DSP Dheeraj Patil who is probing the case said, “The post mortem clearly says that the death has come due to strangulation by hands. As of now it seems that the they have killed him as they saw him talking to Sachin’s sister. We cannot say whether they had a relationship. At this point, we can not ascertain that he was killed because he belonged to the Dalit community. We cannot rule out any possibility.”
