BAREILLY: In December 2010, two Dalit sisters were burnt alive in their Moradabad house.
Their brothers, Rakesh and Rajesh, had been arrested for murdering a woman, 30, and her daughter, 8, during a robbery. Nine days later, the woman’s relatives surrounded their house. They wanted revenge. They set the house ablaze, the mother Rajo Devi, who survived, later said. Her daughters Gita, 22, and Monu, 20, died. On Monday, 11 years on, a special SC/ST court found the seven accused, including three women, guilty and sentenced them to life imprisonment for caste-based atrocities.
“Police had initially registered an FIR under sections 302 (murder), 147 (rioting) and 354 (attempt to outrage the modesty of a woman) of the IPC along with sections of the SC/ST Act against 12 people,” special public prosecutor Anand Pal Singh told TOI. “In the chargesheet that was filed, the murder charge was dropped. Instead, seven persons were charged under sections 306 (abetment of suicide), 504 (intentional insult) and 143 (unlawful assembly) of the IPC.”
News reports had in 2010 reported that the police had said it could be an “accident or suicide”. Rajo had told the court that the accused had come with kerosene canisters around noon that day. “They hurled abuses at my daughters and said they would not spare them,” she had said. “They locked the doors and assaulted them. No one came to our rescue, despite my daughters’ screams. They poured kerosene over my house and burnt it down … I knew them all. They were from my neighbourhood.”
During the trial, statements of 19 witnesses were recorded. “That included the mother, the government doctor and policemen. On February 23, 2021, the court added the murder charges again,” Singh said. “However, the accused were given the benefit of the doubt for murder. But they were found guilty under the SC/ST Act and abetment of suicide.” The special court judge, Sandhya Chaudhary, on Monday referred to the Nirbhaya judgement to say that “a court should not be unnecessarily generous while handing out punishment. If an incident has been proven, the punishment should be severe.”
In its order, the court sentenced the seven accused — Satish Chandra Madan, Sagar Bhandula, Sonia Kohli, Asha Sachdeva, Amarjeet Kaur, Bunty Malik and Vinod Kakkad — to life imprisonment under Section 3 (2)(v) of the SC/ST Act (a non-member of SC/ST communities perpetrating offence under the IPC against a member of an SC/ST community). They have also been convicted for abetment of suicide (10 years’ imprisonment), unlawful assembly (six months' imprisonment) and intentional insult (two years in prison). A total cash fine of Rs 1.07 lakh each has also been imposed. Singh said, “An additional Rs 3.57 lakh will have to be paid to the girls’ mother Rajo. She has not appeared in court for a while and has recently moved away from Moradabad.” The brothers Rakesh, who worked as a sweeper, and Rajesh were sentenced to life for murder by a Moradabad court three years ago.
