Twenty-year-old Rishikesh Wawalker, from the
village of Veer in the southern Indian state of Maharashtra, was settling down
to a simple breakfast of roti bread and tea when the sound of blood-curdling
screams came from outside.
He rushed out of his home where, to his horror, he was confronted by a 150-strong mob of angry villagers armed with wooden sticks.
"They told me they were going to murder me and they would cut my family in half," Mr Wawalkar told the Telegraph.
"I had never been attacked before this but the villagers have threatened me and my family for the entire time we have lived in Veer," he added.
The mob set upon Mr Walwalker and his family whose only crime was to be a member of the Dalit - or untouchable - class, outside the caste system that determines everyone's place in Indian society.
Throughout history, Dalits have been subject to violence from higher-caste Hindus but the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown has seen the number of attacks surge, with the National Dalit Movement for Justice (NDMJ) reporting a 72 per cent increase in April and May compared with the same two months in 2019.
Recent attacks - the majority of which have gone unreported - include the murder of at least 11 Dalit men and three Dalit women who were fed human excrement and accused of being witches.
In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, the NGO Evidence recorded a five-fold increase in brutal attacks on Dalits during the lockdown, compared with the first three months of 2020.
Source: Telegraph
0 COMMENTS
