Some affluent upper caste men in Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh district allegedly assaulted two Dalit youths and tore the clothes of a Dalit woman on Wednesday because they were drawing water from a borewell installed by the government for irrigation.

Palash Basant, superintendent of police of Aligarh rural, said: “The police… admitted the injured cousins to Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College of Aligarh Muslim University. We have registered a case against four persons from a family on the charges of fighting, insulting others, stripping a woman at a public place and attempt to murder. They are absconding and will be arrested soon.”

As per the complaint of the woman in Bhudasi, the youths, her cousins, were drawing water from the borewell to irrigate their field, about 1km from the village.

“Vinay Singh Bilu, Komal Kumar, Anuj Singh and Manawar Singh attacked my cousins with sticks. They also fired in the air. I rushed to save my cousins but the assailants tore my clothes and misbehaved with me,” she complained to the police.

“Irrigation department officials have allotted villagers slots of two-three hours twice a week but these people (from the upper castes) don’t let us collect water. They don’t want us to remain farmers, they want us to work as labourers in their field,” she told reporters.

Hill state tunnels for car parking

The Uttarakhand government has decided to construct small underground tunnels to address the perennial problem of parking in the hills.

A proposal moved by the PWD got the state cabinet’s nod at a meeting here on Wednesday.

The tunnels will serve as parking lots in the hills, Uttarakhand chief secretary S.S. Sandhu told reporters. Rail Vikas Nigam Limited, the Tehri Hydro Power Development Corporation and Uttarakhand Jal Vidyut Nigam Limited will construct the tunnels, he said.

The cabinet also approved an Uttarakhand Landslide Mitigation and Management Centre in the disaster-prone state, officials said. Work on the stalled Dehradun-Mussoorie ropeway project will be speeded up.

PTI