Karnataka High Court convicts ten for attacking Dalits who complained against upper caste man

The Karnataka High Court recently convicted and sentenced ten persons to one year of imprisonment for barging into a Harijan colony and attacking several of its Dalit residents, who belonged to a Scheduled Caste (SCT)..Single-judge Justice JM Khazi found that the attack was only carried out only because two Scheduled Caste (SC) persons had earlier approached the police with a complaint against a member of a "forward community." "The accused have chosen to assault complainant and others for the simple reason that though they belong to Schedule Caste, they had the courage or audacity of complaining against person belonging to forward community," the Court said. The Court added that it cannot ignore the fact that the victims were indiscriminately assaulted by the accused without any justification, only because two of the victims had tried to file a police complaint against a forward caste man..It proceeded to convict ten persons who were accused of being part of the group that attacked the SC victims for various offences under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act (SC/ST Act)..The case concerns a complaint filed in August 2008, when one Lakshmamma (complainant) and others, who belonged to a Scheduled Caste were said to have been attacked by a group of men and women from a forward community. The complainant said that the perpetrators had entered the Harijan Colony in the evening and verbally abused them with derogatory references to their caste, before physically attacking them using clubs and stones.The attack was allegedly carried out after an attempt was made earlier in the day by certain SC members to file a criminal complaint against a forward caste man over a scuffle that took place in the morning. The prosecution claimed that the evening assault was carried out in retaliation to the morning's complaint. .In 2011, the trial court acquitted all of the eleven persons accused in the case. The State did not challenge the trial court's verdict. However, the complainant (one of those attacked) filed an appeal before the High Court, questioning the correctness of the trial court's decision. .The High Court allowed the appeal on October 31, after finding various errors in the trial court's approach. Among other factors, the High Court found that the trial court had wrongly concluded that the criminal complaint was ante-dated to "throw away" the entire prosecution case as a "false" one. "The trial Court cannot stop by just making an observation that the complaint and FIR are anti-dated. It has to state as to how the prosecution is benefited by it or the accused are prejudiced," the High Court added. .The High Court further criticized the trial court for hastily pronouncing its verdict without properly examining certain evidence on the record.“The view taken by the trial court is wholly unreasonable and is not a plausible view. Certainly, there is a non-consideration of evidence placed on record. There is also a palpable misreading of evidence and consequently, the conclusions arrived at by the trial court is perverse,” the High Court said..It, therefore, reversed the acquittal of all the accused. One of the accused had passed away while the case was still pending. Therefore, the High Court sentenced the remaining ten persons to undergo imprisonment for one year and pay fine of ₹3,000..Advocates Clifton D'Rozario, Raghupathy S and Maitreyi Krishnan represented the appellant. Advocate KG Sadashivaiah represented the private respondents (accused). High Court Government Pleader K Nageshwarappa represented the State government. .[Read Judgment]