In a landmark verdict, a Gujarat court has sentenced five individuals to five years imprisonment in the 2016 Una flogging case, delivering justice to the Dalit men who were brutally thrashed for skinning a cow carcass, an incident that triggered nationwide outrage.
A special court on Tuesday sentenced five convicts in the 2016 Una flogging case in which four Dalit men were thrashed when they were trying to skin the carcass of a cow to imprisonment of five years and imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on each of them.
A day earlier, the special court in Veraval convicted five persons and acquitted 35 others in the flogging case. The incident had triggered massive protests across the country at the time.
On Tuesday, the court of special SC/ST atrocities cases judge JJ Pandya sentenced the five accused to a five-year jail term under the provisions of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
Apart from a maximum jail term of five years, the court also sentenced them to three-year imprisonment under sections 323 and 324 of the Indian Penal Code, one-year imprisonment under section 342, and a jail term of two years under section 504. All the sentences will run concurrently.
The incident occurred at Mota Samadhiyala village near Una town of Gir-Somnath district on July 11, 2016, when four Dalit youths, as part of their traditional profession, were skinning the carcass of a cow that had died earlier in some other village.