New Delhi: An eight-month pregnant Dalit woman was allegedly beaten up so brutally by an upper caste woman and her son in Uttar Pradesh that she died six days later from the internal injuries.
Adding insult to injury, doctors at the local district hospital didn’t bother to check the woman properly when she was taken there after the attack and dismissed her since there was no external injury. Later, she died of internal head injuries. Her eight-month-old male fetus also died with her.
The Indian Express reports that Savitri Devi, a resident of Khetalpur Bhansoli village in Bulandshahr, made a measly Rs 100 a month by picking up trash from outside the homes of five upper-caste homes in her village. According to witnesses, she was her doing job as usual on October 18 when she lost balance and touched a bucket that was sitting outside another home she did not work for.
Anju, the resident of the house, rushed out and was infuriated that a Dalit woman had ‘defiled’ her bucket and started raining punches on her pregnant belly. She also banged her head against the wall, following which her son Rohit joined her in assaulting Savitri.
Savitri’s 9-year-old daughter, who was accompanying her, ran to the Dalit settlement to get help and managed to rescue her. On the same day, Savitri’s husband went to lodge a complaint with the police but didn’t manage to register one since the police pointed out that Savitri didn’t have any external injuries.
Police told The Indian Express that they lodged a complaint two days later after visiting the locality and speaking to eye-witnesses. Meanwhile, the hospital had returned the duo. On October 21, Savitri, who was in deep agony fainted from pain. She was rushed to the same district hospital which had sent her away. She was declared ‘brought dead’.
The assailants are absconding.
This comes roughly two months of the lynching of another Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh. In Agra, 62-year-old Maan Devi was killed on the suspicion that she was a braid chopper and ‘witch’ who was cutting of women’s hair in the village and adjoining areas.
This month itself, the naked corpse of a 14-year-old Dalit girl was found in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh. She had been raped and her throat was slit, and pouches of alcohol found near her body.