AHMEDABAD: A 34-year-old Dalit has accused a Navrangpura builder and his two friends of abusing and refusing to sell a plot in Santej to him after coming to know of his caste.
In his FIR on Wednesday, Jignesh Pandya, who belongs to the Guru Brahmin community, said he had gone to see a residential plot in Santej on April 23. A guard told him that it belonged to builder Kankesh Rai.
Pandya, who lives in Vavol area of Gandhinagar, went to Rai’s office in Puneshwar Chambers in Navrangpura on April 25. “There, we struck a deal for the plot for Rs 35 lakh. I gave a token of Rs 1 lakh to Rai,” Pandya told police.
Pandya added that Rai called him to his office on May 2 to complete some documentation. “Rai was present there with his two friends. During our talk, Rai asked to see my Aadhaar card. He asked if I belonged to the Brahmin community. I told him that I was a Garoda Brahmin – a Dalit sub-caste considered to be Brahmins among Dalits,” said Pandya.
He stated, “Having heard this, Rai and his friends turned aggressive. They told me that they would not sell their plot to a man from the scheduled caste community. They hurted casteist slurs too,” said Pandya in the FIR. A complaint of uttering abusive words along with the charges under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) act against Rai and two others.
This article first appeared on timesofindia.indiatimes.com