Two Dalit workers known to these 16 took a loan of ₹9 lakh from the estate owner, and he targeted this group as they were yet to repay it.
Two Dalit workers known to these 16 took a loan of ₹9 lakh from the estate owner, and he targeted this group as they were yet to repay it.
The police in Karnataka are looking for a father-son duo following allegations that they locked up 16 people from various Dalit families at a coffee estate in the Chikkamagaluru district.
Some local reports claimed that the incident resulted in a pregnant woman — one of the aforementioned people detained against their will — apparently suffering a miscarriage.
However, the local police later said her family members told them that she had suffered a miscarriage earlier.
The incident, which is said to have taken place on Saturday, 8 October, gained prominence after a video of it was circulated on social media platforms.
The accused have been identified as sexagenarian Jagadisha Gowda and his son Tilak J Gowda, said to be in his 30s.
They are both residents of Hunasehallipura in Chikkamagaluru, where they own a coffee estate named Hyrambipura in the Jenugadde village, the police said.
The duo is absconding ever since they learnt that a case was filed against them on Monday.
One of the members of the four Dalit families, a 20-year-old pregnant woman, Arpitha, was admitted as an inpatient to the Chikkamagaluru district hospital on Sunday. In her statement to the doctors, she said she was a victim of physical assault.
A medico-legal case (MLC) was thus registered, and the nearest police station — in Balehonnur — was intimated.
Head constable Jayarame Gowda went to the hospital and obtained Arpitha’s statement, in which she alleged that Jagadisha and Tilak assaulted her and her family members on Saturday.
In the statement, Arpitha also stated that she and her family members, along with people from three other families known to her, had come to work at the coffee plantation three months ago. They lived at the line houses inside the coffee plantation where they worked, Arpitha told the cops.
Recently, there was a quarrel involving two individuals named Sathish and Manjunath with a few other families living in the line houses. It apparently concerned mischief by some children.
When the quarrel escalated, Jagadisha intervened, slapped Manjunath, and asked him to go back to his house.
Manjunath, who was humiliated in front of all the other families, told Jagadisha that they were not going to work at his plantation anymore.
Jagadisha told Manjunath that he could leave after he repaid the ₹9 lakh he and his group had availed as a loan from him.
Manjunath and Sathish left the plantation and went in search of work at other plantations to gather money.
Arpitha, in her statement to the police, said Jagadisha and Tilak showed up at her house around 10.30 am on Saturday morning and started verbally abusing her and her husband Vijay, demanding to know why Manjunath and Sathish were not returning his money.
“Jagadisha then tried to snatch my phone, which I resisted. He then assaulted me. When my husband Vijay intervened to stop him, he was also assaulted,” Arpitha said.
The members of all the other families — including two other women, Roopa and Kavitha — who came to the couple’s rescue were all assaulted and locked in that house by Jagadisha and Tilak.
They told the Dalits to call Manjunath and Sathish and tell them to come immediately with the money. Till then, then all of them would remain locked in that house, the father-son duo apparently said.
One of the workers living in the line houses took a video of this incident on his phone and posted it on social media, and word spread from there.
Meanwhile, as Arpitha started complaining of stomach pain, Jagadisha and Tilak opened the door. Arpitha’s family requested Jagadisha to take her to a hospital in his vehicle, but in vain.
She somehow managed to go to a private hospital in Kadabagere, after which she came back and was admitted to the Chikkamagalur district hospital, from where she gave her statement.
Meanwhile, a few of the locked family members, approached the Balehonnur Police Station on 8 October and informed the SHO about the incident.
The SHO went to the spot that day and reportedly warned Jagadisha and Tilak not to take the law into their hands. He is also said to have asked the plantation workers to settle Jagadisha’s money in a month’s time as they requested for some time.
On Sunday, the family members who were locked up approached the Superintendent of Police (SP) of Chikkamagaluru and filed a complaint against Jagadisha and his son.
SP Uma Prashanth forwarded that complaint to the jurisdictional Balehonnur Police Station and a case was registered against the father-son duo under relevant sections of the SC & ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act of 2015 along with IPC sections on assault, wrongful confinement, and intentional insult.
The police obtained the video from social media as evidence in the case, and are on the lookout for the accused.
An officer privy to the investigation said though Arpitha claimed in her complaint that she had a miscarriage due to the assault, her family members admitted to the cops that she had a miscarriage five days before the incident, and that a few ASHA workers in the area attended to her.
“We will take statements from the ASHA workers to corroborate the details,” a senior police officer said.
Another officer said this same group of four families worked six months ago at a coffee estate named Moodusari estate near Mudigere in Chikkanahalli village on Belur Road, where they had similar financial problems.
“They join plantations to take a loan to settle the previous owner’s loan,“ the officer told South First.
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