VILLUPURAM : The assault on a Dalit family in Vellamputhur village four days ago, which left a boy dead and his mother and sister critically injured, seems not to be an isolated incident, as enquiries revealed that two similar incidents happened in the village in the last nine months in which the victims were from Kurava and caste Hindu communities. Though no formal complaints were registered in the previous two cases, victims of all the three incidents have put forward a demand for justice. Silence till now had resulted in the repetition of the crime, said some women.
Vellamputhur is a silent village situated around 40 kilometres from the district headquarters. The village has nearly 300 families from Dalit and caste Hindu backgrounds. Around eight Kurava families also live here. The residents said that they had not witnessed a single crime until the assault on a 14-year-old Kurava girl and her parents in May last year. The three-member family had gone to sleep at their house and the relatives had found all the three injured the next day. It was thought that somebody had entered the house forcefully and tried to rape the girl after assaulting all of them.
Local sources said that the Kurava family, not wanting to bear the stigma of a rape,decided to hush up the incident. They claimed that they had tried to kill themselves due to mounting debts.The impoverished Kurava family, who did not want to reveal her daughter to be holding a stigma that she was sexually assaulted, refused to reveal the truth to the police and the police officials also closed the case claiming the incident to be a suicide attempt due to debts, local sources alleged.
Meanwhile, within five months of the incident, in October 2017, a 25-year-old woman, belonging to caste Hindu community, who was sleeping with her two-year-old daughter, was similarly attacked by some unidentified miscreants after being dragged to a nearby lemon tree before being allegedly sexually assaulted.
The second victim, who said that she regained consciousness only after three months due to severe head injuries, claimed she could not hardly recall what had happened to her till now. However, she thanked god as her two-year-old daughter was not attacked.Similar to the fist incident, the second victim also refused to lodge a complaint fearing that the reputation of her family would be tarnished. All these victims complained that they suffer constant headaches and visual problems because of the attack.Police sources, who raised suspicion that the third incident, in which an eight-year-old Dalit boy was brutally beaten to death, should have been executed by the same accused who were involved in the previous two crimes. They also suspected that the third attack was staged to rape the 14-year-old school girl .
Meanwhile, the police officials refuted the allegations that the recent attack had a caste angle as the victims in the previous incidents belonged to Kurava and caste Hindu communities. According to Villupuram DSP Veemaraj, they suspected that the culprits in the three incidents could be either some local villagers who migrated out of the village or some persons from north India who were involved in assaults and rapes. The police have reportedly formed five special teams to nab the culprits involved in the crime at the earliest.