Dalits are being oppressed not only in Uttar Pradesh but in entire country, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday after meeting Dalit victims of caste violence in Saharanpur at the Uttar Pradesh-Haryana border.
U.P. police had sealed the district borders to stop Mr. Gandhi after he was denied permission to visit Shabbirpur village to meet the victims. However, Mr. Gandhi managed to enter Saharanpur and met Pahal Singh and Shiv Kumar who were attacked and whose houses were burnt by a violent mob on May 5 in Shabbirpur.
After meeting the victims, the Congress vice president said there was no place for Dalits and the poor in today’s India.
“Dalits are being oppressed and it is happening across the country and not just in Uttar Pradesh,” he said.
Mr. Gandhi met the victims of Shabbirpur’s clashes at a dhaba near the Sahjahanpur police chowk in Saharanpur on the Haryana-Uttar Pradesh border.
Mr. Gandhi, who walked a little into Saharanpur along with Congress MP Ghulam Nabi Azad and other party leaders, engaged in sharp exchanges with the police, who told him that they could have stopped him at the State border.
“Don’t tell me that you could have stopped me at the border itself. Under which law would you have stopped me,” Mr Gandhi asked.
Spreading fear
“The State government has failed on the law and order front. The national government is spreading fear in every section. The poor, Dalits, minorities, farmers are being oppressed through fear. This government listens to only the rich. And this is not how a country like India should be run,” he said.
Mr. Gandhi raised the issue of violence in Jammu and Kashmir and said that "every time there (sic) is peace in J&K, it benefits India and every time there is violence in J&K it benefits Pakistan and Modi government is doing this.”
He also blamed the Narendra Modi government of providing “foothold to anti-national forces” in J&K. “The valley is burning. We brought peace in the State. Now Modi government is providing foothold to the anti-national forces in the State,” Mr. Gandhi added.
More than a dozen FIRs have been filed till now and three dozen have been arrested in cases of murder and violence which started on May 5 in Shabbirpur.
