As the country immersed in the celebrations of Dussehra on 12 October, a horrific incident of gendered violence took place in Madhya Pradesh’s Khandwa where a Dalit Woman was burnt alive for filing a complaint against molestation. The 19-year-old Dalit woman from a village near Khandwa was set on fire by the son of the accused man whom she had reported to police for harassment, local media has reported. The offender wanted to “take revenge from the woman for his father’s insult.” The woman succumbed to the fatal burns on 17 October. The horrific crime occurred days after she had registered a police complaint against a 48-year-old man who, according to her, had “attempted to force himself on her while she was alone on the farm.”
On Friday, his son infuriated over the complaint, barged into the woman’s house, poured petrol on her, and set her on fire. A local BJP leader Mukesh Tanve is reported to make outrageous statements blaming the victim and defending the accused man who is responsible for the immolation. Tanve claimed that “the woman had staged self-immolation due to fear, but the police is wrongly treating the case as a criminal act.”
BJP-ruled UP, MP see a record increase in atrocities on Dalits
The recurrent cases of abuse and violence are only indicative of a larger trend of caste-based violence against Dalit women in the country which in recent years has soared in states like Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan. The Hindi heartland states remain at the top in gendered violence with a high number of atrocities against Dalits and marginalised communities. All three states are governed by the Bhartiya Janata Party and were at the top in crimes and atrocities against the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes in the year 2022 as per the NCRB data.
This story was originally published in feminisminindia.com. Read the full story here.