Girl Burned in Northern India in Possible Inter-Caste Violence
LUCKNOW, India -- Police in northern India arrested a man who
allegedly threw a girl into a pile of glowing embers after he caught
her trespassing, an attack authorities said Wednesday may have been
motivated by caste.
The 6-year-old girl is recuperating at a state-run hospital in
Mathura, the north Indian city where the alleged attack occurred, said
Dr. Ramesh Kumar.
She is considered a dalit _ a member of the lowest caste in India,
where a system of rigid social hierarchy still lingers. The alleged
attacker, Madan Singh, 22, comes from a higher caste.
Singh discovered the girl relieving herself Tuesday in a field he
owned and demanded she immediately stop what she was doing and leave
his property.
"When she did not respond, he simply lifted her and threw her in a
heap of embers," local police official Govind Agarwal told The
Associated Press. "The cry of the girl drew the attention of the
villagers. They came ru****ng and pulled the girl out of fire."
Singh was arrested Wednesday and charged with attempted murder, said
police official R.K. Chaturvedi. Police are investigating whether
Singh attacked her because of her caste, he said.
A complex hereditary system divides Hindus into castes, and those on
the lower rungs of the social ladder still face intense discrimination
_ even though the system was made illegal nearly six decades ago.
In much of rural India, people of lower castes are kept from
upper-caste drinking wells, barred from temples and kept out of
village schools. Violations are often met with violence.
The attack took place in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which is
governed by India's most powerful low-caste politician, Mayawati, a
dalit woman who uses only one name.
Mayawati is the leader of a movement to empower dalits -- the lowest
class in India who were once known as "untouchables" -- but crimes
against them remain common across her state.
Hindus make up about 84 percent of India's 1.1 billion people. There
are also caste-like divisions among Muslims, who account for 13
percent of India's people, and Christians, who make up 2.4 percent.
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