The Hindu : National : Panel concerned at lynching of nomads

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Saturday, Sep 22, 2007
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Panel concerned at lynching of nomads

Vinay Kumar

Three-member team visits Bihar to probe incident
“Take stringent action against the guilty”

NEW DELHI: The National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes has expressed serious concern over the recent lynching of 10 members of a nomadic community in Bihar’s Vaishali district by villagers on a suspicion that they were thieves.

The commission asserted that the incident was “decidedly not a case of vigilante justice as being termed in the media.”

A three-member team of the commission, comprising chairman Balakrishna Renke and members Lakshmibhai Patni and Meena Radhakrishna, visited Bihar on September 15 and 16 to investigate “vigilante justice.”

The commission demanded that all social and political angles behind the incident be investigated thoroughly and the lone survivor given adequate protection.

Reports “untrue”

It termed “untrue” reports that a patrol group caught red-handed the 10 thieves and stolen property was recovered from them.

The commission found that the 10 belonged to a nomadic community, Kureri. It demanded that the investigation be carried out in depth and most stringent punishment be given to the culprits. The police have had invoked Sections 147, 148, 149, 302, 307 and 353 of the Indian Penal Code against the accused.

“The nomadic communities in modern India live a subhuman existence and fall victims to barbaric, medieval practices of civil society. We note with pain that only after such gruesome events that the government thinks of rehabilitation and providing ‘justice’ to the victims. This makes us wonder whether it is important for each nomadic community to lose so many of its members before they will be rehabilitated and noticed as the State’s most vulnerable subjects today,” it said.

The commission demanded that an immediate, time-bound survey be conducted in all States of these asset-less nomadic communities, which have no territorial rights, and a rehabilitation package implemented.

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