Late last week, Bharatiya Janata Party West Bengal unit chief Dilip Ghosh targeted Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee saying the State has a “terrible” record on security of Dalits. But National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data of 2014 show very few cases of atrocities on the community in the State.
Mr. Ghosh questioned the State’s record of resisting atrocities on Dalits soon after Ms. Banerjee condemned the attacks on members of the community in Gujarat and dispatched a team of MPs to study the ground situation in Una, where some youths were beaten up for skinning dead cows.
Ms. Banerjee’s comment triggered a debate, and the BJP chief said “three persons from the Scheduled Caste community in West Bengal’s Nadia district were lynched, but nobody was punished”, indicating the prevalence of such incidents in the State. West Bengal has 2.14 crore Dalit community members, making up 20 per cent of the State’s population.
The number is second only to that of Uttar Pradesh, which has 4.13 crore Dalits. But while in Uttar Pradesh, the percentage of crimes against Dalits is 17.2 against the all-India total, in Bengal, it is 0.3. However, the figures raise a lot of questions on whether the crime rate is low because of sociological reasons or under-reporting by the police. Retired IPS officer Nazrul Islam, puts the responsibility on the police for recording fewer cases.
