The Principal District Court here has convicted 11 caste Hindu youths and awarded one year jail term to them each for waylaying and assaulting two Dalit youths for riding a two-wheeler in their area, wearing new clothes during Deepavali in 2012.
Holding the 11 youths guilty under Section 3 (1) X of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, Principal District Judge Meena Satheesh awarded them one year imprisonment each and imposed a total fine of Rs. 57,000 on them.
All the eleven accused – Muthuvel, Ilamparithi, Pratheep, Kumar, Subbiah, Vignesh, Senthilmurugan, Ramesh, Suresh, Kamaraj and Suresh from N. Mangalam near SP Pattinam –were present in the court when the judge pronounced the judgment on Monday.
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The judge imposed a fine of Rs. 5,500 each on four accused and Rs. 5,000 each on seven accused. As the sentence was less than three years, the accused filed petitions before the court, requesting the judge to keep the sentence under suspension for one month so that they could go for appeal. After the judge allowed the petition, the accused paid the total fine amount.
The prosecution case was that M. Karthik and his friend Magalingam, Dalits from N. Mangalam, were passing through the caste Hindu-dominated area on a two-wheeler, wearing new clothes after celebrating Deepavali, when the accused stopped and assaulted them, questioning their “braveness”.
Calling the victims by their caste name, the accused assaulted them for coming to their area, wearing new clothes, that too on a two-wheeler, the prosecution said.
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The prosecution produced 12 witnesses and though a few of them turned hostile, the judge held that the prosecution proved the case, R. Sathiyamoorthy, Special Public Prosecutor, said.
This was the fifth conviction under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities Act) in the recent past, he added.