By Pramod Dalakoti / The Times Of India
ALMORA: In Salt, Almora district, 27-year-old Vikram Kumar, employee of a private firm in Himachal Pradesh, had set out with his baraat of around 50 people to the wedding venue when he was asked to get off the horse he was riding by a group of upper-caste women who intercepted the procession. They then asked him to abandon the horse “if he didn’t wish for a repeat of the Kafalta incident” in which 14 Dalits were lynched, five of them burnt alive, after a Dalit groom insisted on riding a horse in Kafalta (Almora) on May 9, 1980.
After a complaint by the groom’s father, Darshan Lal, with the Almora DM and the SC & ST Commission on Tuesday, police on Wednesday evening lodged an FIR against five women and one man under sections 506 (criminal intimidation), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 3(X), 3(XIV) of the SC/ST Act. A district administration team visited the village where the incident took place, Tadiyal, on Wednesday to gather more details.
The complaint added that this was not the first time that a Dalit person had been threatened and it certainly won’t be the last. “They do it repeatedly. We demand strict action against the perpetrators. Otherwise, we will be forced to organise an agitation and the administration will be solely responsible for it,” the complaint said.
Lal, who used to work as a labourer to sustain his family, said he wants his sons to make their place in society. “I am proud of my son taking a stand to break the age-old norm of discrimination in our area. I commend his courage and stand by his decision. They tried to insult him, but he didn’t let them.”