A fact-finding team consisting of Dalit scholars and academics has termed the death of a Dalit youth, whose body was found on a railway track in Namakkal, as a “clear case of honour killing” and have demanded a CBI probe.
A team of the Intellectual Circle for Dalit Actions (ICDA), which included academics such as C. Lakshmanan of the Madras Institute of Development studies and Dalit writers like Stalin Rajangam, said in a report that the investigation by the local police into the murder was clearly “slow and sloppy”, with the prime accused still absconding.
According to the report, published after a visit to the area last week, several factors clearly establish that Swathi, who belongs to the Gounder community, and Gokulraj, the Dalit youth, who was murdered, were in a relationship. “In fact, Gokulraj had recently bought a diamond ring on instalment basis from a jewellery shop which seems to indicate that the couple may have thought about marriage,” said Mr. Rajangam.
The report said the youth had been threatened of dire consequences even a year earlier for his relationship with Swathi. “This fact has to be thoroughly investigated,” the report said.
The team said the role of the prime accused, Yuvaraja of the Dheeran Chinnamalai Gounder Peravai, had been underplayed. “He was actively involved in campaigns against inter-caste marriages,” Mr. Rajangam said, urging the government to ban such organisations and incentivise inter-caste marriages. Sources said Yuvaraja was also an active organiser of campaigns against writer Perumal Murugan last year over the contents of his book Madhorubagan . Protests broke out after several caste and Hindutva organisations demanded the ban of the book for its portrayal of Gounder women.
In fact, as early as in 2012, The Hindu had reported that youth belonging to smaller caste-based organisations had begun a campaign in colleges in the Salem area against inter-caste marriage. The report claims that this campaign could have given the perpetrators the advantage of a network that identified inter-caste relationships.
