In a landmark verdict, five individuals have been sentenced to five years in jail for the 2016 Una flogging case, a horrific incident of caste-based violence against Dalit men in Gujarat.
A special court has sentenced five convicts in the 2016 Una flogging case to imprisonment of five years and imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on each of them. The case involved the thrashing of four Dalit men when they were trying to skin the carcass of a cow.
A day earlier, the special court in Veraval convicted five persons and acquitted 35 others in the flogging case, while the case against a policeman was abated due to his death. The trial against a juvenile is pending.
The incident, which occurred in Mota Samadhiyala village, had triggered massive protests across the country after videos of the attack went viral.
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.
Defence lawyer Vijay Kumar said that four out of these five convicts have already served more than six years in jail, while another one has been in jail for the last four years and two months, and will be required to undergo the remaining jail term.
The convicts are identified as Ramesh Jadhav, Rakesh Joshi, Nagji Vaniya, Pramodgiri Goswami, and Balwatgiri Goswami. while the trial against a juvenile is pending.
The court had examined 260 witnesses during the course of the trial.
The IPC sections under which the accused were convicted deal with causing simple hurt, voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons, wrongful confinement, and intentional insult.
They were also held guilty under sections 3 (1)(D) and 3 (1)(E)(R)(S)(U) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
However, they were acquitted under IPC sections 307 (attempt to murder), 397 (robbery), 365 (kidnapping), 147 (rioting), 355 (assault to dishonour a person), and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) under which they were chargesheeted.
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.
The accused, self-proclaimed cow vigilantes, flogged the youths, who were then illegally put in the lockup and thrashed by police personnel as well.
It was alleged that the four Dalits were thrashed for almost 4-5 hours. Police allegedly connived with the perpetrators and forged some FIR-related documents to help them.
Villagers from nearby areas had attempted to rescue the Dalit youths, but were threatened by the accused. The villagers then called the police control rooms in Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad.