A still from the video recording of the police beating Komal.
Source: PTI/Outlook
“Sub-inspector Shyamlal Yadav in UP, 2009, beat up Komal, a 6 yr old Dalit girl for allegedly stealing 280 INR from a woman on the street. He justified it saying she had admitted to the theft.”
On February 2, 2009, a police officer in Etawah, UP was caught on tape torturing and assaulting a 6 year old Dalit girl, Komal. The police officer, Senior Sub-Inspector Shyamlal Yadav, belonged to the Yadav caste, classified as OBC in the state. As he inflicted the violence upon her, six other police officers (names and castes unreported) stood by watching and did not intervene. He tortured her based on the allegation that she had stolen Rs 280 from another woman. She belonged to a family of daily wage labourers.
In the footage, the police man can be seen pulling her hair, beating her, and slapping her repeatedly as she begs for mercy. The police man tried to justify it saying that she had admitted to stealing the money. It was later found that the allegation was false.
The allegation, even if there was evidence, is immaterial in this case. A representative of the criminal justice system assaulted a Dalit child for no reason other than to assert his power over her, in a context where the criminal justice system is structurally biased against Dalits, and police brutality and wrongful incarceration is widely normalized. A 2018 survey showed that 35% of Dalits were afraid of being falsely persecuted and mistreated by the police over allegations of petty theft.
The policeman’s justification of torture, and misrepresentation of facts on record (the allegation was later found out to be false), is an attempt at blaming the child for the violence she had to face. The police here abused their power to assert that the safety and dignity of a Dalit child is conditional upon her legal innocence or her apparent morality.
Following national outrage, senior sub-inspector Shyamlal Yadav was sacked while SHO Chandrabhan Singh was suspended.
References:
https://www.cfo-india.in/cmsarticle/up-police-turn-devil-thrash-8-year-old-dalit-girl/
https://www.indiatoday.in/latest-headlines/story/6-yr-old-dalit-girl-beaten-up-by-police-in-up-38759-2009-02-03
https://www.outlookindia.com/newswire/story/dalit-girl-was-beaten-over-a-false-complaint-of-theft/653466
