In an uncommon case reported from the capital city of India, a Hindu woman has been booked by the Delhi police under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act on charges of caste abuse and mental harassment. The woman was booked based on the complaint filed by her father-in-law Ashok Kumar (60). However, this is after the woman registered an FIR against him and other members of her husband’s family for allegedly assaulting her and executing fraud against her.
The woman, after the complaint filed on December 12 stated that she was being implicated in a false case and that all the accusations against her were fabricated. According to a report by Swati Goyal Sharma in Swarajya, the case against the woman was filed 20 days after the Delhi Police officials declared that they could not find any evidence against her in the case for casteist abuse.
The woman meanwhile mentioned that the case that she had filed against her father-in-law and other members of her husband’s family is still pending at the Gurugram Court. Ashok Kumar, in his recently filed complaint against the woman stated that she and her family members abused him for his caste and mentally harassed him. He also said that the family members of the woman had physically assaulted him in the past.
In the FIR he mentioned that he belongs to the Julaha caste which comes under Scheduled Castes. He said that his daughter-in-law was indifferent and never cooperated after getting married to his son Yatin. “She often used to pick up fights over petty issues. Within three-four months of her marriage, she left and went to her parent’s house,” he said.
He said that the girl’s family members thrashed him in August 2019 and hurled abuses at him, calling him ‘choora and chamar.’ He also alleged that his daughter-in-law called him ‘neech’ and said that he was equal to some kind of dirt. He meanwhile submitted CCTV footage as proof and introduced his neighbour and his brother-in-law Rajesh Munjal as witnesses to the incident.
The woman has been booked under Section 3(1)(r)(s) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989. Reportedly, 20 days ago, the officials from Delhi Police had noted that they found no evidence of castist abuse against her. The Police in the Action Taken Report submitted to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) on a complaint by Ashok Kumar in 2021 stated that the woman used the word ‘uncivilized’ for her father-in-law. It is not a caste-based remark, they said.
According to the letter, images and CCTV video of the residence on 4 August 2019 were analyzed, but no physical attack was observed. The film also lacked audio recording, thus no argumentative comments could be heard.
The woman talked to Swarajya over the incident and noted that she got married to Yatin on March 8, 2019, whom she found on a matrimonial site. She said that Yatin worked in the Ministry of External Affairs and mentioned his surname as Arora (Punjabi Hindu Caste). However, on the wedding card, Yatin’s parents happened to mention their surname as ‘Bajaj’. “We were surprised with the ‘Bajaj’ surnames as we knew them as Aroras but did not think much of it, and we did not confront them about this,” she said adding that her father-in-law would consume alcohol daily and his behaviour towards her was not at all good.
“I never had any problems with my husband, but I had problems with my father-in-law from the very initial days. He would show up in my washroom on the pretext of needing to talk to me. Once, he pointed to a dustbin where I had disposed of my sanitary pads and asked me what that was. I felt humiliated,” she was quoted.
On complaining about this to Yatin, he asked her to ignore it, as per the woman. Later she said she was sent to her parent’s house for some days and was never called back. The groom’s parents, according to her, made sure that she never returned home or to Yatin. The engagement soured, and in August, the woman filed a complaint with the Gurugram Police Women’s Cell, alleging that she was being harassed by her in-laws and that they would not allow her to return to her spouse after marriage.
To address the matrimonial conflict, the district court assigned a mediator. Despite many sittings, no conclusion was in sight. While she said she did not want to live with her father-in-law, he was insistent that his son would not be allowed to live apart from him. She claims that her father-in-law and other members of her husband’s family beat her up in court in November. She reported them to the Shivaji Nagar Police Station in Gurugram for assault in November 2019.
The woman stated that she and her family were harassed for dowry and were threatened that they would tear the woman into pieces. “My father-in-law slapped me in the court. He further grabbed me by my breasts while his wife Kamlesh tried to strangulate me with the gold chain she was wearing. But as she mounted pressure, the gold chain broke. I fell on the floor,” she said.
“Yatin and his father Ashok Kumar pushed me to the floor and kicked me on my chest and stomach. The staff present there intervened to rescue me. I then called the police helpline 100 at 2.11 pm and 2.19 pm for help. By the time Police arrived, they fled,” she added. The police then booked Ashok Kumar, Kamlesh, Yatin Kumar, and Ramesh Munjal under IPC sections 323 (causing hurt), 34 (crime done with common intention), and 506 (criminal intimidation).
The woman meanwhile stated that nobody was arrested after the incident. Later she learned that her husband had attained a foreign posting and was about to leave India for 3 years. “I then sent a letter to the Ministry of External Affairs to inform them about the FIR against their employee. I also marked the letter to EAM S Jaishankar. When I went to the Ministry’s office with my complaint, there, an official checked the records and told me that my husband and his father were marked in the SC category,” she said.
According to the reports, it was hard to believe that her husband and his family belonged to the SC community as the surnames they used were Arora and Bajaj, and Munjal. She wrote to NCSC in January 2020 to verify the findings at the MEA office and found them to be found true. Meenakshi filed an appeal with the commission, asking for a thorough investigation of her husband’s family. Hearings before the commission are still ongoing three years later. She said that “Ashok Kumar filed fake and falsified documents to attain the status of SC to profit from the quota.”
She claims she also filed a complaint with the Mukherjee Nagar Police Station, stating that her father-in-law got an SC certificate fraudulently, but the complaint was not processed into an FIR. However, another complaint filed at Sector-14 Police Station of Gurugram was converted into an FIR. This FIR was filed under IPC section 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating), on her complaint against her husband. “No arrest was made after this,” she said.
In the current scenario, the woman says that she is being implicated in a false case filed by her father-in-law Ashok Kumar. The complaint against the woman has been filed under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act on charges of caste abuse and mental harassment.
