This story is from September 8, 2020

UP: Dalit man beaten to death after rumour that he ‘sold’ his daughter

Unable to bear the cost of her education, Sarvesh Diwakar had sent his daughter away to live with a relative in Noida for a while. His neighbours, however, heard something else — that he was trying to “sell” his daughter. With righteous rage, they beat him up. He lay on the road for hours, no one taking him to the hospital. Police eventually did, but he died of his injuries on Monday morning.
UP: Dalit man beaten to death after rumour that he ‘sold’ his daughter
Representative image
AGRA: Unable to bear the cost of her education, Sarvesh Diwakar had sent his daughter away to live with a relative in Noida for a while. His neighbours, however, heard something else — that he was trying to “sell” his daughter. With righteous rage, they beat him up. He lay on the road for hours, no one taking him to the hospital. Police eventually did, but he died of his injuries on Monday morning.
“We have lodged an FIR under Section 302 (murder) of the IPC and the SC/ST Act, and arrested four persons identified in a video shot by a local.
The body has been sent for autopsy,” said SP Ajay Kumar. Five people have been identified.
Diwakar, 45, was a confectioner from Sirsaganj in Firozabad who had been living in Mainpuri in a rented house with his 16-year-old daughter. She worked as a domestic help in some houses in the locality, sources said, but continued studying. With the Covid-19 outbreak and the pandemic that followed, Diwakar was out of options. He had not been getting any work and sent his daughter away to a relative’s house in Noida so she could be taken care of.
But someone in the neighbourhood started a rumour that he was “selling” his daughter off. Soon local residents descended on him. Four video clips show five men beating him up with sticks as he lies, writhing in pain. At some point, someone seems to have moved him from the rooftop where he was attacked and left him on the road.
“We got information on Sunday evening that he had been beaten up. A team got there and found him on the road. He was taken to the district hospital, but succumbed to injuries on Monday morning,” SP Kumar said. His daughter got home from Noida on Monday and told police she had been away so her studies would not be disrupted.
The Samajwadi Party, meanwhile, tweeted that it will provide Rs 1 lakh financial assistance to the Dalit family and demanded Rs 10 lakh compensation from the state.
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