Four persons have been arrested in Badaun district of Uttar Pradesh on charges of allegedly beating up a Dalit and forcing him to drink urine after he refused to work on their fields.
The Station House Officer of the concerned police station in Hazratpur has been suspended for negligence of duty.
As per the victim, identified as Sitaram Valmiki, some influential men in his village beat him up and abused him after he refused to harvest their wheat crops and instead preferred to collect fodder for himself.
Irked by his defiance, he said, the accused started hitting him when they found him gathering fodder in the field and dragged him all the way to the village and tied him to a Neem tree.
"They pulled out my moustache and even made me drink urine as shoes and slippers came raining down on me," alleged Mr. Valmiki.
A case was lodged at the Hazratpur police station under Sections 308, 342, 332, 504 and 506 of the Indian Penal Code. Relevant sections of the SC/ST Act were also evoked, the Badaun police said.
The arrested persons were identifed as Vijay Singh, Shailendra Singh, Vikram Singh and Pinku Singh, all residents of the Azampur Visauriya village.
IG, Bareilly Range, Dhruv Kant Thakur met the victim in his house on Monday and instructed Badaun SSP Ashok Kumar to take action in the case.
The Dalit man wife's initial call to the police about the assault went in vain as they failed to take any action. She never gave up and complained with the Dial 100 police emergency service to save her husband.
