He was a crusader for Dalit rights and rattled Himachal Pradesh’s caste-ridden society.
Sitting behind the polished wooden desk in his office, Sirmaur’s Superintendent of Police (SP) Rohit Malpani looked like a man who hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days but wore a look of slight satisfaction.
The Director General of Police had just left Sirmaur Police Station after holding a press conference earlier during the day. “This is the biggest case I’ve touched so far,” said Malpani, who has been an SP in Sirmaur for the past 14 months. “But only masala gets covered in Crime Patrol, so you won’t see this on TV. It is a proper UP-Bihar style murder: first hit him with sticks, then throw his body on the road and run a car over him frontwards, then backwards, and then frontwards over his face again—all of it in broad daylight at around noon. Even though there is a school nearby as well as a Block Education Office, not a single person is ready to speak.”
The case Malpani is referring to is the murder of Dalit RTI activist Kedar Singh Jindan (43) that took place on September 7 at Bakrash village in Sirmaur District’s Shillai Block, Himachal Pradesh, around noon. A ‘one-man army,’ Jindan, who was also a practising advocate at the Shimla High Court, worked for the rights of Scheduled Castes and Tribes as well as for those who brought their cases of inter-caste marriages to him. He had also contested last year’s Assembly elections from Shillai on a Bahujan Samaj Party ticket.
Jindan, who belonged to the Koli community, had held a press conference earlier in June in Shimla, wherein, using the Right to Information (RTI) Act, he had claimed that Below Poverty Line (BPL) certificates were being tampered with in his native place of Shillai. He said certificates were being issued to people belonging to the upper castes, who not only have heavy incomes but also lead a well-to-do life adorned with houses, multiple vehicles, etc.
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