Dindigul man gets life-term for driving Dalit minor to suicide

MADURAI: A Special Court in Dindigul on Wednesday sentenced a 39-year-old caste Hindu man to life imprisonment for driving a Scheduled Caste girl to suicide by hurling caste insults at her in 2020.

Yuvarani, who was 17 at the time, had moved to Vedasandur from Villupuram district in 2020 along with her mother Chitra, a widow, and her 15-year-old sister. The three found work in a garment mill and rented a small room in a row house at Nagapatti village in Vedasandur taluk, Dindigul. The convict B Rajkumar and his wife Arul Selvi lived next door to the family.

According to the prosecution, a small open drain carrying wastewater from the houses ran through the narrow lane of the row-house complex. Whenever utensils or clothes were washed in any of the households, some water would stagnate in the lane.

Rajkumar was enraged to find that he had been “polluted” when he stepped on wastewater discharged from the victim’s house as they belonged to a scheduled caste.

“He used to abuse them with casteist remarks, saying he was polluted because he walked on the puddle of waste and soapy water in front of their house,” the police said. His wife Arul Selvi would also make caste slurs at the family, they noted.

Rajkumar would mostly begin the abuses in the evening hours when he came home drunk. Chitra finally filed a complaint with the Vedasandur police. After elders from Nagapatti village accompanied him to the station and assured the police that it would not happen again, both families agreed to a compromise. The police registered a Community Service Register (CSR) receipt and warned Rajkumar and his wife.

However, within a week, on May 26, 2020, Rajkumar again picked a quarrel with Chitra’s family and abused them for hours with casteist slurs. Yuvarani, who had a fever that day and did not go to the mill with her mother and sister, ended her life late that night, unable to bear the psychological trauma of the repeated caste abuses by Rajkumar and his wife, the prosecution told the court.

The Vedasandur police registered a case under Section 306 (abetment of suicide) of the IPC and under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and investigated the case.

Dindigul Superintendent of Police S Jeyakumar, who reviewed the progress of the case, directed the investigating officer to speed up the investigation and produce the documents and witnesses in court.

After the prosecution proved its case, the Special Court sentenced Rajkumar to life imprisonment and an additional two years of imprisonment, and imposed a fine of Rs 12,000, under Section 306 (abetment of suicide) of the IPC and various sections of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Arul Selvi had died during the trial due to ill health.