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UNDUE ADVANTAGE

The rampant misuse of the Dalit Act in Uttar Pradesh has a larger malaise behind it, writes India Today's Subhash Mishra.

The case is fairly simple. A Dalit arrives at a police station claiming that he has been humiliated by an upper-caste neighbour. The police take his word and a complaint is registered under the Scheduled Caste and Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. Within hours, the neighbour is arrested. And then just as promptly comes the Dalit's due: a good part of the Rs 25,000 he is entitled to under the Act everytime he is belittled or perceived to be belittled by a higher caste.

Dalits benefiting from the generous provisions of the SC/ST Act, especially in Uttar Pradesh, is nothing new. In fact, the issue was a subject of much debate during the last regime of Mayawati in 1997 when hundreds of Dalits misused the Act to make quick money or to settle personal and political scores with their upper-caste rivals. Recent investigations by India Today have now revealed a greater violation: that there is a method to this misuse with those in authority just as much to be blamed.

In what appears to be the general trend, no government agency pursues a case filed under the Dalit Act to verify the validity of the charges. Shockingly, 90 per cent of the complainants make good with a part of the compensation amount although the accused are eventually absolved of the charges against them. Till November last year, the State Welfare Department spent as much as Rs 10 crore on paying initial compensation to Dalit victims of atrocities despite the cases fizzling out gradually. Worse, there have been instances where genuine victims have gone without assistance even though official records state otherwise. For example, a 16-year-old girl, Malan, of Newajganj in Lucknow who was assaulted by a youth in the neighbourhood is yet to get the Rs 6,650 entered against her name in the register of the Social Welfare Department. "There is a deep-rooted nexus between some Dalits and a section of petty politicians and lawyers who are making good money under this Act," reveals a police officer who has served as a special superintendent of police in several districts.

The Malan case apart, what generally happens is that the so-called victims themselves begin to withdraw from the case at a "suitable" juncture. For most offences, the Dalit Act stipulates that a victim or his kin be given 25 to 50 per cent of the total compensation amount at the time of the registration of the crime and the rest after the charge-sheet is submitted or conviction made in court. Complainants are usually content with the initial amount. And it is not difficult to see why. From Rs 25,000 for being humiliated to Rs 2 lakh if a non-earning member gets killed, the compensation that a Dalit stands to win if he were to file a complaint is sizeable. The range of charges which allow for such dues is just as huge with everything from being "humiliated" and "forced to drink an obnoxious substance" to "denial of passage" and "murder" being included.

In fact, it has been found that in more than 90 per cent of the cases under the SC/ST Act, the complainants do not proceed with the case after getting the first instalment of the compensation. "There is not a single case of final payment in the entire Lucknow district in the past two years," lets on District Social Welfare Officer Raghunath Bharti. The cases are either left pending or out-of-court settlements made. There are times when the complainants turn hostile against the police as was the case with 158 out of 200 complainants in Basti district. In six other cases, the witnesses themselves withdrew from the scene leading to the acquittal of the accused.

The racket, which has been thriving for years now, has drawn the attention of some judges who from time to time have passed orders for the recovery of money from complainants in suspect instances. One such order was made in September 2001 in the Prabhawati Devi case where Special Judge B.K. Srivastava not only released the accused but also asked the district magistrate of Basti to recover the financial assistance given to the complainant by the Government. In another case of misappropriation of government money, Srivastava asked the Basti administration to conduct a detailed inquiry to find out the circumstances under which a complainant claimed Rs 75,000 as compensation on the ground that his wife was murdered. Investigations revealed that the wife was well and alive and that the complainant had managed to get a murder case filed in connivance with some police officials. The complainant was promptly asked to return the money he had taken.

But then again, the SC/ST Act itself is silent on the issue of the recovery of money in cases where the accused are acquitted. Invariably, the district administration is reluctant to take on the responsibility as it entails a sensitive issue and could trigger an ugly caste conflict. The absence of a mechanism to monitor the cases is also taking its toll. The fact that complainants can walk away with huge sums of money even though the majority of the accused are eventually absolved of the charges against them point to three factors: that the charges themselves are fake or the accused are implicated or the complainants are not in a position to pursue the cases to their logical end. Whatever the reason, the very purpose of the Dalit Act is defeated. Out-of-court settlements too can act as a hurdle with true victims not getting their due.

In a bid to control the damage, Mayawati has instructed the police to register the Dalit Act only after making a stringent scrutiny of the complainants and their charges. Commissioner of Social Welfare Jagat Pal claims that as a result, the number of complaints has come down by a third compared to previous years. There are some regions like Mirzapur division where not a single case of Dalit Act was registered until Mayawati reviewed them two months ago. But the larger questions remain. What happens to a case after it is registered? And more important, do the genuine victims get justice?

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