Wrongdoers, victims often reach a compromise after cases are registered, says lawyer
Two Dalit youths Piyush Parmar and Krunal Maheria were attacked in Limbodara village of Kalol taluka for sporting a moustache in early October. In another case which took place in the same week, one Jayesh Solanki of Bhadraniya village in Borsad taluka was killed after he had an altercation with upper caste men for seeing garba celebrations.
Even as the three victims await justice, what they don’t know is that the statistics is stacked against them.
The probability of perpetrators being convicted, if they are booked exclusively under the SC/ST (Prevention Of Atrocities) Act, is very low. The data about the number of convicts booked under the Act in Gujarat was taken from the Prison Statistics report while the number of cases registered, specifically under the Act, were taken from the Crime in India report.
Both these reports, put out by the National Crime Records Bureau, suggest 4592 cases were registered exclusively under this Act, while only 63 people were convicted, over last 15 years. Assuming each convict represented one case, the conviction rate would be a minuscule 1.37%.
In fact, 1030 cases were registered under the Act between 2011 and 2015, resulting in zero conviction as the prison data shows no new convicts came to prison under the act.
Against, 1709 cases registered between 2006 and 2010, a mere 26 people were convicted. Going by the assumption that each conviction represents each case, the percentage of conviction would come to 1.5%.
“An inherent and systematic bias is at play in such cases. It starts right from when cops register and investigate a case, to the level of public prosecutor who fights the case to the judge who gives the verdict. Bias at all levels means the case is poorly reported, investigated, argued and the end result is that justice is denied,” said Govind Parmar, a lawyer, who has fought for several Dalit victims at the Sessions Court in Ahmedabad.
Parmar, who is also a member of the Human Rights Law Network, said in many cases the victims, especially from rural areas, give in because of societal pressure.
“Villagers are interdependent. It is very easy to isolate a family, economically and socially. Therefore, even when the victim’s family file a police complaint, they don’t pursue it further. At times, even the wrongdoer belongs to the same village as the victim and, with the help of other villagers, puts pressure on the victim,” said Parmar. “At times, even the cops are not aware of the right sections of the Act under which the wrongdoer should be invoked. In such cases, it becomes very difficult to present the case in a court,” said Parmar.
GV Gohil, ACP, SC/ST cell, Ahmedabad, said the poor conviction is a result of the compromise the victims do with the accused after a case is registered.
“Most of such cases come from places where the accused and the victim stay in the same village and hence they compromise.
However, it doesn’t happen in cases when the victims are injured,” said Gohil.
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