Hathras court sentences one to death, life imprisonment to 11

AGRA: 27 years after a dalit,

Dataram

, was burnt alive by some

upper caste men

in Hathras, a

sessions court

on Wednesday sentenced one person to death and 11 others to

life imprisonment

for the crime.

Additional district and sessions judge and special judge SC/ST (Prevention of atrocities act),

SN Tripathi

, pronounced the capital punishment for

Kunwar Pal

, who had thrown an injured Dataram in a burning hut on March 11, 1990. The judge considered this brutal act as rarest of rare offense.

The court sentenced Jogendra, Babu Singh aias Vijyendra and Rajendra, Hariom, Umashankar, Anil Kumar alias, Bhola, Mukesh, Anil alias Pappe, Santosh, Dinesh Darji and Shambhu to life imprisonment.

Talking to TOI, prosecuting officer,

Chawi Ranjan Dwivedi

, said that the incident had occurred on March 11, 1990, the day of holi festival, when a couple of Dalits, including Udayveer from Rudayan village of Hathras, put colour on an upper caste Thakur’s face.

The Thakur and his associates thrashed Udayveer and later burnt houses of 40 dalits in the village. Dataram, who was not involved in the incident as such, was shot at by Jogendra with a country made pistol and Kunwar Pal had thrown him into one of burning hutments, revealed Dwivedi.