A day after a 35-year-old scheduled caste (SC) man from a village in Tarn Taran, Punjab was brutally murdered and strung up at the farmers’ protest site near Delhi border, a Sc right’s group, National Scheduled Castes Alliance (NSCA), on Saturday said the Taliban style lynching was a murder of the Constitution.
NSCA chief Paramjit Singh Kainth, who met chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes Vijay Sampla in New Delhi regarding the incident, said the brutal murder is a sign of hatred which has been the reason why the SC community has suffered discrimination and inequalities even after 74 years of Independence.
Kainth said people are trying to connect this crime with ‘religious sacrilege’ and making it controversial rather than pointing to the simple plain fact that a person has been brutally murdered without any fear by the culprits.
“Even if the alleged cause has been purported to be so, No one in this nation has the liberty to carry out such inhuman injustice to anyone. Murder of Lakhbir Singh is in a sense, the murder of our ‘sacred’ Constitution which protects and rights and liberties of the SC community as well as the basic Right to Life under Article 21 which protects everyone,” he added.
The NSCA chief said the government should take stern action against such hate crimes and make an example out of this case so that no one in the future has the courage to commit such heinous crimes against anyone and not just a SC person.
The NSCA submitted a memorandum to Sampla demanding swift legal resolution of the case, prompt financial assistance for the aggrieved family and no mercy for the culprits behind this heinous crime.
Kainth said the National Commission for Scheduled Castes chairman assured the NSCA delegation that proper action will be taken in the matter and he (Sampla) will oversee the entire process through the Commission till the culprits are behind bars and justice has prevailed.
NSCA asked for financial assistance to be provided to the family of the deceased and a government job for the next of kin to be assured.
A resident of Cheema Khurd village in Punjab’s Tarn Taran district, Lakhbir Singh, a SC Sikh, was killed at the farmers’ protest site near the Delhi border on Friday morning, allegedly for desecrating the Sikh holy book. A member of the warrior Sikh order ‘Nihang’ surrendered to the Haryana Police on Friday in connection with the murder case.