Una Dalit flogging incident: govt apprise High Court of the progress of investigation

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat Government today apprised the High Court of the progress of the CID-crime investigation of the Una Dalit flogging case and reiterated that there was no need of a CBI inquiry in to it.

The division bench of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice V M Pancholi ordered that a copy of the charge-sheet be handed over to Mr Kanti Chavda, who had filed a PIL before it seeking transfer of the probe to CBI. The court asked the petitioner to go through the charge-sheet and then put his view. It fixed the next date of hearing on September 28.

Government pleader Manisha L Shah on the other hand reiterated that there was no need to transfer the case to CBI when CID-crime was doing the job properly. She apprised the court of the action taken so far including the arrests of the culprits and some police personnel filing of charge-sheet in a designated court.

The CID-Crime investigating the sensational Dalit flogging case of Mota Samdhiyana village in Una taluka of Gir-Somnath which draw nation-wide protest after its video surfacing in July this year, has arrested a total of 43 accused in this connection including a minor and four police personnel. The then PI of Una Nirmalsinh and a lady ASI Kanchanben Parmar were also among the four arrested for police personnel for their alleged negligence in the incident of the public flogging of seven people of the Dalit family by said cow vigilantes for allegedly killing a cow.

On September 7, the CID-crime had filed an over 1500 page charge sheet in the designated court at Una. The then chief minister Mrs Anadiben Patel had ordered the probe by CID crime days after the incident came to fore. The incident had caused much uproar across the nation with violent protests by Dalit outfits all over Gujarat. Many leaders had visited Gujarat to meet the victims.

PTI