Even as Tamil Nadu is witnessing a spike in honour killings and anti-Dalit atrocities, Chief Minister MK Stalin has refused to accede to the demand from the ruling DMK’s allies to bring in a special legislation to curb them on the ground that effective implementation of existing penal laws was enough and would serve the purpose.
Stalin was responding to a calling attention motion of the CPI(M) on the brutal mob attack on the party’s district office in Tirunelveli city following the conduct of an inter-caste marriage on June 13. Raising the issue in the House, CPI(M) member Nagai Maali urged the government to expeditiously enact a special law to curb honour killings and rising violence directed against the Dalits. Alleging that the police were not acting impartially, he demanded that the CPI(M) district secretary be provided with adequate police security.
The mob attack on the CPI(M) office followed the marriage of a Dalit youth and a dominant caste girl after the latter’s family had stopped their wedding at the registrar’s office. The party had conducted the marriage after duly informing the cops. Later, a mob from the girl’s family, armed with sickles and crowbars, barged into the office and damaged the properties and held out a threat.
Earlier, the district had witnessed gruesome murder of a dalit youth for marrying a girl from the intermediary caste. A Dalit student and his sister were brutally assaulted with sickles by the boy’s school mates in Nanguneri recently. According to reports, the district had witnessed 50 caste-related deaths, including honour killings.
The Chief Minister, sharing the members’ concern, however, made it clear that a special legislation was not needed to tackle this problem. He said strict implementation of existing laws in the IPC, CrPC and the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act was enough. Citing some cases where the guilty had been punished with these laws, he said “the government will appoint Special Public Prosecutors to argue these cases. Further, instead of the Sub-inspector (SHO) being the Investigation Officer (IO), DySPs would be made IOs to ensure fair and speedy investigation.”
On the Tirunelveli issue, Stalin informed that sections under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act had been invoked in the case and of the 14 arrested, seven women have secured bail while the rest are under judicial custody.
Interestingly, the Marxist legislator found support from the BJP’s Vanathi Sreenivasan besides other allies of the DMK.