Nagaur violence: Death toll reaches five

Land feud turned cast violence kills 5, family members refuse CBI probe.

The land feud in Nagaur’s Dangawas village that had snowballed into a clash between Jats and Meghwals on May 8 claimed its fifth victim on Saturday when Ganpat Ram, a Dalit who had sustained serious head injuries in the clash, died at Ajmer’s Jawaharlal Nehru hospital.

Ganpat’s family members refused to receive his body, insisting on a CBI probe into the clash. The state government, meanwhile, handed over the investigation to the CID (CB).

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With the deceased’s kin refusing to receive his body, police declared it unclaimed and had a postmortem conducted. This agitated community members who started protesting outside the mortuary in protest.

Renu Meghwal, state president of Youth Meghwal Association of India accused police of handling the matter “very insensitively”. “The victim’s relatives will not claim the body unless a CBI probe is ordered and all the accused are arrested. We also want Rs 20 lakh as compensation to the next of kin of the four Dalits who died in the clash and Rs 5 lakh for the injured,” she added.

In Jaipur, social activists led by Aruna Roy and Annie Raja held protests in demand of compensation and government jobs for the kin of the four Dalits who died in the clash.

Nagaur police, however, maintained that the matter was being unnecessary sensationalised. “Those protesting at the hospital were politically motivated outsiders. The victim’s relatives are in the village, not in Ajmer,” Nagaur SP Raghavendra Suhasa said.

He also denied that Dalit women were raped during the clash. “We have conducted three medical examinations and none of them have established rape. Yes, they were beaten and we have booked the assailants for outraging the modesty of women,” he said.

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