In September 2022, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced that the newly built Secretariat will be named after BR Ambedkar. He said, “The fact that the state's main administrative centre is named after India's social philosopher and intellectual Dr BR Ambedkar is a source of pride for us. Telangana, which has served as an example for the country in the past, is setting yet another example by naming the Secretariat after Dr BR Ambedkar.” Additionally, a 125-foot-tall statue of Ambedkar too has been proposed on 11.4 acres near Hyderabad’s Hussain Sagar lake. The CM also urged the Union government to honour Ambedkar by naming the new Parliament building after him. While the Telangana government's efforts to honour Ambedkar are laudable, the same cannot be said about its treatment of Dalits, especially with regard to the implementation of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act (POA), 1995.
From registering a First Information Report (FIR) to submitting a charge sheet, victims of caste atrocities have to deal with several roadblocks before their cases are taken up in court. Even then, the inadequate number of special courts that hear POA cases has resulted in high pendency rates. Among the disposed cases, the conviction rate is only 10.9%. Compensation for victims is seldom paid on time, with the Union and state governments merely shifting blame on to each other when questioned about it. The state is yet to set up a state level vigilance and monitoring committee to ensure the implementation of the Act, while meetings of the District-level Vigilance and Monitoring Committees (DVMC) are few and far between.
The poor state of affairs of Telangana’s handling of caste atrocities is highlighted by the high number of crimes against SC/ST persons that the state witnesses. According to the Crime in India 2021 report published by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Hyderabad ranked fifth out of the 19 metro cities of the country in terms of crimes against SC/ST communities. TNM takes a look at how Telangana fares in the various stages involved in implementing the POA Act.
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Telangana CM K Chandrashekhar laid the foundation stone for the 125-foot-tall statue of Dr B R Ambedkar on April 14,2016 (Twitter/TelanganaCMO)
The high-power monitoring committee at the state level in Telangana has always been an ad hoc committee. The government issued an order in 2016 that allows the Minister from the Department for Development of Scheduled Castes (SCDD) to be in charge of the committee, in place of the CM. Battula Ram Prasad, president of Mala Sankshema Sangham, an Ambedkariite organisation, said, “The CM appears to have forgotten that the committee is ad hoc. This demonstrates the degree of his dedication towards SC/ST communities.”
Telangana’s annual report on the working of the POA Act for 2021, submitted to the Union government, revealed that the state level meeting for 2021 was held on June 6, 2022. This means that the committee did not meet in 2021, and met only once in 2022. This is in clear violation of the provisions of the POA Act, which required state governments to establish a high-power vigilance and monitoring committee with 25 members, the chairperson of which shall be the CM. The committee must meet every six months to review the implementation of the Act's provisions, and discuss how victims and witnesses can access justice. The committee must also examine various reports from the state government and the responsibilities of various officers or organisations charged with carrying out the Act's provisions.
The state government’s annual report also showed the conduct of DVMC meetings is no better. District collectors are mandated by the POA act to establish DVMCs.Of the 33 districts, 15 (including Hyderabad) met just once in 2021, while 13 districts did not convene a single meeting. “In many districts, DVMC meetings are held not even once a year, denying members a chance to inquire about the status of particular cases or the total number of pending cases,” Ram Prasad said.
Uma Devi, additional director of SCDD, refuted this while speaking to TNM and said that the meetings are held regularly. “District-level meetings are held at least twice a year. If they haven't been held, districts are notified by the department to hold them. The meetings are occasionally cancelled when the collector is not present or they have to attend other meetings,” she said.
Sujetha Surepally, Dalit activist and professor at Satavahana University in Telangana, said, “The Act is neglected as the people responsible for implementing it are not from the Dalit community. That is why Dr Ambedkar is important. He made sure that Dalits can compete with others in all sectors through reservations.”
In the absence of regular and effective monitoring mechanisms, cases of crimes against SC/ST persons tend to drag on. According to Telangana’s annual report, 6,399 cases were still pending resolution at the end of 2021. The POA Act stated that a charge sheet must be filed within 60 days after the FIR. But up to November 2021, charge sheets were filed in only 802 (31%) of the 2603 (2094 from 2021; 509 from 2020) cases. Even though there are 10 special courts with a special public prosecutor each, they do not exclusively hear SC/ST cases, and are hence severely burdened. The special courts in Rangareddy and Karimnagar have more than 1100 cases pending judgement. Judges in special courts being assigned cases other than SC/ST cases was found to be the reason behind the delay.
Although the POA Act allowed for districts with a large number of cases to establish an exclusive special court, Telangana doesn’t have any. For instance, a special court in Rangareddy has 1189 cases pending resolution, which is nearly twice the state average of 667. The National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) has taken note of the absence of exclusive special courts and requested the Telangana government to take necessary steps. Praveen Kumar, an advocate at the High Court of Telangana, said “ The special courts take up other cases too. Recently, a few additional courts were set up in some districts. We hope to see special courts in every district soon.”
In addition to timely judicial remedy, victims of caste atrocities are also entitled to due compensation. According to the POA Act, the victims have to be paid the first instalment of the compensation amount within seven days of filing the FIR. The remaining instalments are to be paid immediately after submission of the investigation report and judgement.
However, the data provided by the collector’s office showed that of the 243 victims who were sanctioned a total of Rs 2.85 crores, only 66 have received compensation worth a total of Rs 1 crore in 2022. The ordeals faced by 40-year-old Babita after she filed a complaint under the POA Act eight months ago illustrate the struggles of Dalits who decide to legally fight caste atrocities in Telangana.
A resident of Kachiguda in Hyderabad, Babita faced several difficulties while lodging an FIR with the local police. In May this year, three Mudiraj (an OBC caste) women living next door barged into her house, and accused her of throwing garbage in their compound. Sarita recalled, “I was alone with my daughter when the incident happened. They shouted obscenities at me and dragged me out by my hair. When my husband and son arrived, they dragged him by the collar. We both were injured.” Babita and her husband Arun decided to file a complaint with the police along with video evidence, but the women’s family prevented them by standing in their way. Meanwhile, one of the women filed a complaint saying that Arun had outraged her modesty. The police found this to be a false allegation on the basis of CCTV evidence.
It took several visits to the police station over two months for the family to lodge an FIR. Babita said, “The police initially asked us to compromise. The whole neighbourhood turned against us after we asserted that we would take it to court. We were humiliated and now live in fear. We are prepared to hear all the slurs, but will not move from the locality as it is they who committed the mistake.” It has been two months since Babita received a proceeding letter that sanctioned Rs 25,000 in compensation. “SCDD officials said there are no funds currently available, causing the delay in payment,” she explained.
SCDD acts as the nodal agency for compensation proceedings after approval by the collector. Victims are compensated between Rs 25,000 to Rs 8 lakh, depending on the severity of the crime, at various stages starting from the filing of the FIR, medical report, or postmortem report, to the conclusion of the case in court, as specified in the Act. The Times of India reported that from June 2014 to the present, the government has paid Rs 81.46 crore in compensation to 8,818 victims.
The compensation amount has to be paid in equal parts by the state and Union governments. The delay, according to Ram Prasad, is due to the discrepancies in fund usage by the Telangana government. “The Union government raised questions on the utilisation of funds in the previous years. The state government is to blame. I wrote to Vijay Sampla, NCSC chairperson, in June, regarding the same and the commission responded promptly and directed the state to submit an explanation,” he said. However, SCDD’s Uma Devi shifted the blame for the delays in compensation to the Union government. “There were no dues until last year. This year it is slightly delayed. The state government has credited its share. It is pending from the Union government,” she said.
Even as the blame game continues, it is evident that CM KCR’s initiatives to celebrate Ambedkar and appear as pro-Dalit are meant for optics. Telangana Congress Scheduled Castes wing chairman Preetham Nagarigari accused the CM of cheating Dalits and said, “The first group to be abandoned after Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) formed government in 2014 were Dalits. TRS calls themselves Dalit Bandhu (Dalit friendly). KCR had promised that a Dalit will be made CM in the newly formed state, but he did not stand by it. It was Dalits who sang revolutionary songs and went to the jails during the protests for a separate Telangana state.” He also alleged, “After the implementation of Dharani, more atrocities are being reported.” Dharani is Telangana’s Integrated Land Records Management System.
Neelam Nagendra, Andhra Pradesh state president of National Atrocity Prevention Force, said, “Telangana CM boasts of Bangaru Telangana (Golden Telangana) but the victims of caste atrocities do not receive timely compensation.” For instance, a 24-year-old nurse was killed by Reddy (an upper caste, land owning community) man in a hotel room in October 2021. The woman's family has not received any compensation even after the charge sheet was submitted. They were informed that officials are unable to disperse the relief amount of Rs 8 lakhs due to the lack of funds. “In Andhra, at least in the districts where Dalit community members are active, there is immediate dispersal of the relief amount. We even ensure that victims' families get government jobs, or SC/ST relief pension,” Neelam said, adding, “Without constant dialogue between activists and the administration, we cannot dream that the Act will implement itself.”
Edited by Maria Teresa Raju
This reporting is made possible with support from Report for the World, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project.