A Dalit youth was beaten to death in the Gadhi Khandari locality (which demographically contains a mixed religious population) of Hathras, UP on Monday night. The body of the youth named Amit Kumar Gautam (27), was recovered from near a Mosque on Tuesday, following which tension spread in the region.
Soon after the incident, the family members of Amit filed a case against five Muslim youths namely Alam, Saddam, Khalid, Sukel and Ashu. Out of these, Alam is a known history-sheeter.
As per the family members, Amit had left home on Monday afternoon saying that he was going out to correct a certificate. After he failed to return home by late evening, they decided to go and search for him, but returned empty handed. At about 7 AM they were informed about his battered body being recovered from the mosque square area.
Reaching that area, to their horror they found him crushed beneath the mosque gate, with grave injuries on his head and neck. The Station House Officer later took possession of the body and after seeing a communal atmosphere being created, police force was deployed in the area and at the postmortem centre.
The police seems to have swiftly acted in this case, and has proceeded to arrest two of the accused named Alam and Saddam.
As per an Amar Ujala report, the murder was committed due to a dispute over a motorcycle. The report claims that Amit had given Alam his motorcycle as a collateral, but was dithering from handing over the bike. It has also been alleged that the accused even tried to attack Amit on Saturday while he was travelling on a bike but was saved after people came to his rescue.
After the news of the incident spread, people protested at the postmortem centre and members of the BJP, Hindu groups like the Hindu Yuva Vahini too reached the area.
Even though the left regularly tries to peddle a “Dalit-Muslim unity” narrative, there have been glaring instances of Dalit persecution by Muslims.
Apart from the aforementioned incident, it was recently reported that Dalit family livingin Mewat Haryana, has alleged that it was brutally attacked by the village goons for refusing to convert to Islam. Besides this even castiest slurs were hurled at them.
In a ground report about the incident by Swarajya, the Dalit family was seen recounting its plight, and then spiritedly reaffirming that they would prefer dying than giving up their religion.