A route map chalked by the district administration and police for the wedding procession of a Dalit groom in Uttar Pradesh’s Kasganj district has triggered a fresh row. While police claim to have prepared the route to avoid face-off between the Dalits and Thakurs of Nizampur village, the youth has questioned why he could not take his ‘baraat’ through the Thakur- dominated areas. The police submitted the route map for the ‘baraat’ to the Allahabad High Court last week. They said new route directly leads to the bride’s house in Nizampur, but skirts the outermost margins of the village, the one Sanjay Kumar, 27, has been insisting to take. “Last week we submitted a map to the Allahabad High Court with the route, taking law and order concerns into consideration,” Kasganj SP Piyush Srivastava said on Wednesday. Kumar, however, claimed that no such route map was submitted to court. “No map has been submitted to the court and neither have we been served a copy. When a party submits a document in court, the other party is served a copy as well, as per protocol,” said Satyavir Singh, who is the counsel for Kumar. “How can police decide which route we must take or on which road should we walk? It is a fundamental right. We do not need police’s permission to walk on a road, which is public property,” he said. Kumar, who belongs to Basai Babas village in Hathras district of west UP, had moved the High Court on March 16 seeking its intervention. ALSO READ | Kasganj: Dalits, Thakurs in month-long tussle over taking out baraat The baraat has become a matter of honour for the 40 Thakur and five Jatav families of the Nizampur village, with neither willing to come to a compromise. District Magistrate R P Singh told The Indian Express that the route chalked by the police led to an open space, 500 metres from the bride’s house, where the ‘baraat’ could carry out its revelry. Meanwhile, the SP said the High Court dismissed Kumar’s writ on Monday. “We had put forward that the authorities were not cooperating, so the court asked us to file a case under section 156 CrPC, which enables any magistrate to begin investigations. We are waiting for the written order,” Kumar’s counsel said.
