Kalyan East remains for the fifth day running gripped with fear as area after area bears a deserted look. More than 150 Dalits, professionals, and home makers all targeted allegedly through false cases have had to seek recourse to panic and courts to secure their security and freedom. Women and minors are being held in custody as Sections 307 and 353 have been applied to them, unfairly it is alleged. Presently nine are in judicial custody of which there are foir women and seven students of which three young women and men, many of whom were giving their public services examinations the day they were arrested. One student is an MTech student.
Photos of a deserted area in Kalyan east where residents have fled because of the hounding and combing operations by the police.
Lawyers have moved for bail in nine of these cases but so far the Orders have not been passed by the local Kalyan court.
The vindictive action is seen as a fallout of the bandh that followed the Bhima Koregaon violence against Dalits on January 1. In Kalyan, unlike other parts aggression between the Shiv Sena controlled Agri Sena and Dalit bastis resulted. It is alleged that while a police station was beateb up by Agris in the violence, Dalits are being hounded and victimized. More than 95 persons are wanted and absconding from this deserted areas.
Reports of dozens of such detentions and arrests in ‘false’ cases by Dalits from all over Maharashtra are coming in. Latur, Nanded, Ahmedabad and Kolapur are the areas apart from Kalyan and Powai in Mumbai where such detentions and arrests have taken place. There appears to be clearcut vindictive actions against Dalits all over the state.
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