Dalits, tribals being targeted: MP

NEWDELHI: Police in Uttar Pradesh and other states are booking Dalits in false cases after the Bharat Bandh protest on April 2, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Ashok Kumar Dohrey has complained to the prime minister.

A shutdown was organised that day by opponents of a Supreme Court order banning automatic arrests and registration of criminal cases under the Scheduled Castes/schedules Tribes Act, a legislation meant to protect marginalised communities from abuse and discrimination. Several people were killed in violence that accompanied the protest. In an April 5 letter to PM Modi, Dohrey wrote: “I wish to bring to your notice that after the April 2 bandh call by the SCS and STS, police in different states, especially in Uttar Pradesh, is targeting people from these two communities and booking them in false cases.”

The BJP MP claimed that a sense of insecurity and anger had gripped these communities over police action such as dragging people from their homes, use of abusive language against them and arresting them for no reason.

“Considering the seriousness of the matter, I seek your intervention in the matter and a direction to take legal action against such officers,” he wrote in the letter. Dhorey told reporters in Parliament that he wrote to the PM after receiving complaints from Dalits in UP and it was his ‘duty’ to bring the matter to his notice.

Dhorey is the third Dalit MP of the BJP, after Savitri Bai Phoole of Bahraich and Chhotelal of Robertsganj, to have spoken against the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh on different issues in the last one week.