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Three held for UP acid attack

The police arrested three of seven accused Thakurs, after they allegedly assaulted six Dalits and blinded two of them with acid.

Four Dalits also suffered serious burn injuries in the incident at Mataila village in Barabanki district, 32 km from the state capital on Friday night.

The Barabanki police initially tried to hush up the case until it hit the headlines, when the six were taken for treatment to Lucknow on Sunday evening.

The government came in for criticism and the incident led to commotion in the state assembly on Monday. However, the issue got diluted when Opposition members insisted on clubbing it with another incident, in which seven bodies were found close to a railway track in Kaushambhi district, near Allahabad earlier this month.

The discussion could not help beyond getting a probe ordered in both cases by the respective zonal inspectors general of police.

Only after the district magistrate and district superintendent of police were detailed to make an on-the-spot inquiry into the incident, three of the seven accused were hauled up.

The victims, hospitalised in Lucknow, said, "We have met this fate simply because the Thakurs lost a tender for fishing in the village pond to enterprising young Dalits, Gauri Shankar, Kewda and Chandrika, who chose to stand on their own feet.''

The contract went to the Dalits because of a lower bid. But this infuriated the Thakurs, who swore to teach the Dalits a lesson. They also issued repeated warnings to them to keep off the pond or face the consequences.

On Friday night, while the six were fishing at that pond, six Thakurs, armed with firearms and batons, confronted them. When one of them tried to explain that they were engaged by Shankar, who had fishing rights over the pond, they were beaten up.

When Buddhai, barely in his teens, pleaded, he got a caning, which was followed with a shower of acid on his eyes. "But their sadistic pride was still not satisfied... so they poured acid on all of us," Ram Lakhan said at the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee hospital.

According to him, "Our family members took us to the Mati police outpost in the neighbourhood, but the police refused to register our report."

On Saturday morning, they reached the police station in Dewa, where a report was lodged. "Our family members and other villagers reached us to the Barabanki district hospital, where we were administered first-aid, but later in the evening, the Barabanki doctors referred us to a bigger hospital in Lucknow," said 22-year-old Kamlesh.

State director general of police M C Dwivedi told rediff.com that the case was under investigation. He admitted that the incident was "highly alarming" and deserved serious attention.

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