New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Friday sentenced to life imprisonment 12 members of the dominant Jat community and 21 other convicts to varying jail terms in the 2010 Mirchpur Dalit killings case in which a 60-year-old man and his physically challenged teenage daughter were burnt alive. The High Court said there that was a "deliberate targeting" of the houses of Balmiki community members by the Jats and it was "an instance of caste-based violence meant to teach the Balmikis a lesson for perceived insults".
In a 209-page verdict, a bench of Justices S Muralidhar and I S Mehta said that 71 years after Independence, instances of "atrocities" against Scheduled Castes by those belonging to dominant castes have shown "no signs of abating". "The incidents that took place in Mirchpur between April 19 and 21, 2010 serve as yet another grim reminder of 'the complete absence of two things in Indian society' as noted by Dr B R Ambedkar when he tabled the final draft of the Constitution of India before the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949. One was 'equality' and the other 'fraternity'," the bench observed.
On April 21, 2010, the house of victim Tara Chand was set ablaze by the members of the Jat community after a dispute between the two communities at Mirchpur village in Haryana's Hisar district, which led the father and the daughter to be burnt alive. Several other members of the Dalit community were injured and there was "large scale destruction" of their properties by the Jats, the court noted in its verdict.
On the burning down of the Dalits' properties, the High Court said that it was not a case of an accidental fire spreading quickly as a result of cow dung cakes or other flammable materials lying around but a "deliberate, pre-planned and carefully orchestrated act." The trial court had earlier convicted only 15 of the 98 persons accused in the case, but the high court had set aside the acquittal of 20 persons. Two men, who were convicted by the trial court, have died during the pendency of the appeals.
Of the 20 persons whose acquittal was reversed, five were awarded life term and other 15 sentenced to jail terms of 1-2 years by the High Court, which said there was sufficient evidence to show that "a large scale conspiracy" was hatched by the Jats against the Balmikis. The judgment of the trial court which had awarded life sentence to three — Kulwinder, Dharambir and Ramphal — was modified to the extent that instead of holding them guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, the convicts were held guilty under the harsher penal provision of murder.