Union home minister Amit Shah on Friday spoke to the families of seven victims of New Year’s militant attack in Jammu’s Rajouri over phone after bad weather prevented him from visiting their homes, but did not reach out to the families of the Dalits killed last month in a nearby village, angering their kin.

Members of Dalit and Brahmin communities were killed in purported militant attacks in Rajouri district within a fortnight. But the Dalit families have been alleging castebased discrimination after top functionaries chose not to visit their homes, made a vague job promise and handed them ex gratia amounts that were lower than that for the upper caste families.

On Thursday, the government handed over cheques of an additional Rs 4 lakh each to the two Dalit families to bring the ex gratia on a par with the Rs 10 lakh given to the Brahmin families. Shah’s failure to meet them has not gone down well with the families of the Dalits.

“He should have treated us as equals. We too have lost our men,” Koshal Vishwa, brother of one of the two Dalit victims, told The Telegraph.

“We wanted him (Shah) to visit us, although we had no hope. We knew media reports only talked about his scheduled visit to Dhangri, not us. On the ground also, we could sense that nobody was coming as no security was deployed in our village. At least, he could have spoken to us (over phone),” Vishwa said.

Shah said he spoke to the families of all seven Dhangri victims but bad weather in Rajouri prevented him from meeting them personally.

“Their courage is an example for the country. All of them said that this was their land and they will not leave it. Some of them had come from PoK but despite that their determination to fight it all bravely is a big thing,” Shah said.