http://expressbuzz.com/states/tamilnadu/28-districts-in-tn-dalit-atrocity-prone-report/251130.html28 districts in TN dalit atrocity-prone: Report
Express News Service
First Published : 25 Feb 2011 08:14:08 AM IST
Last Updated : 25 Feb 2011 10:16:23 AM IST
CHENNAI: Twenty years after it was implemented, the Scheduled Castes
and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act has been diluted
owing to dilly-dallying by police in filing cases of atrocities
against dalits, lack of special courts and non-functioning of
district- and state-level monitoring committees, according to a report
released by civil groups.
Quoting the study, the National Coalition for Strengthening SCs and
STs (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, or NCSPA, noted on Thursday that
even after 20 years, 28 districts in Tamil Nadu are still declared
prone to atrocities against the SC and ST people, having registered
6,668 cases during the two-decade period. The report card was released
by NCSPA convener Sirivella Prasad at a press conference here.
Ossie Fernandes, a core-group member of the NSCPA, alleged that a
five-member monitoring agencies set up to monitor the trouble-torn
districts and submit a report to the chief minister had till now done
nothing in this regard.
The State government has not even appointed special officers to look
into the cases, he added.
Interestingly, the report states that even the Adi Dravidar Welfare
department has admitted that the committee met not even once for three
years from 2006, when the State-level vigilance and monitoring
committee was constituted.
According to the NCRB, police across the country registered more than
five lakh atrocities, of which only 30 per cent were registered under
this Act.
Dr Prasad said the biggest issue is the police's indifference to the
Act. "As many as 171 out of 386 cases were filed without proper
sections of SC/ST (PoA) Act. Of these 74.9 per cent were filed under
Section 3 (1) (10) which attracts least penalty under the act," he
added.
Said the report: "The investigation of atrocity cases by DSP or
higher-ranking official was done in only 42 per cent of the 386
atrocity cases. Still worse, in 146 of the 386 cases, a formal
investigation was not done and in 47 of the 146 cases only a
preliminary enquiry was carried out by a lower-ranking official."
Though the proportion of case registrations under the Act increased
form 32 per cent in 2000 to 79 per cent in 2009, the conviction rate
decreased from 25 per cent in 2005 to 13 per cent in 2009, the report
added.
A study of 500 Dalit women's cases of violence across AP, Bihar, Tamil
Nadu and Uttar Pradesh between 1999 and 2004 revealed that the
majority of the women faced several forms of violence from either or
both perpetrators in the general community and the family, the report
said.
"The most frequent forms of violence were verbal abuse (62.4 per
cent), physical assault (54.8 per cent), sexual harassment and assault
(46.8 per cent), domestic violence (43.0 per cent) and rape (23.2 per
cent)."
The report has urged the government to appoint high-level committees
at the center and in the states or union territories to review the
implementation of the act, assess the realisation of its objectives
and take appropriate and speedy action for strengthening the act and
for effective implementation in future.
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