KOPPAL: A sessions court in Karnataka on Thursday sentenced 98 people to life imprisonment and handed five-year jail terms to three others in a 2014 case of discrimination and caste violence targeting Dalits at Marakumbi village of Gangavati taluk.
Judge Chandrasekhar C convicted 101 people in the case, of whom three received lighter sentences because Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, couldn't be invoked against someone belonging to either community.
Sources said the mass sentencing was among the highest in a caste-related case anywhere in the country.
Public prosecutor Aparna Bundi said 117 suspects were tried in the case, originating from an Aug 29, 2014, police complaint about a mob assaulting Dalits and torching their huts in retaliation to a clash the previous day.
Dalits had been barred from barber shops and eateries in Marakumbi.
Such was the impact that Marakumbi had to be kept under police surveillance for three months after the violence. State's dalit rights committee organised a march from Marukumbi to Bengaluru to protest the atrocities. A siege of Gangavathi police station lasted several days.
Sixteen of the suspects named in the chargesheet died during the course of the decade-long trial, Bundi said. The sentenced life convicts, who have also been fined between Rs 2,000 and Rs 5,000 each, are in Ballari central jail.
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