Kendrapara:
A Dalit woman was allegedly beaten up by members of upper caste for drawing potable water from a government-dug deep tube well in their area at a village in Odisha's Kendrapara district, police said on Wednesday.
The woman was thrashed by upper caste groups in Pikirali village, about 25 kilometres from Kendrapara, on Monday. The upper caste groups said Dalits were not allowed to draw water from their wells.
The sole tube well in Dalit Sahi area, which served about 10 Dalit families, had been lying defunct since last month. The poor families were forced to use polluted water from a pond nearby.
Driven by compulsion, a Dalit woman, Kalpana Sethi, 25, decided to fetch water from a tube well in front of the house of an upper caste person, Bhamara Jena.
The woman filed an FIR yesterday against Bhamara, Umakanta Jena and Kishor Jena in the local police station alleging that they hurled abuses at her and assaulted her for drawing water from the village tube well.
The woman also alleged in her FIR that some influential upper caste persons had been preventing the Dalits, including women and children, from taking water from the village tube well.
Ms Sethi claimed that earlier too, upper caste members had abused some Dalits for using the tubewell.
"Acting on the FIR lodged by the complainant, cases under sections 354, 294, 341, 506 of IPC and section 3 of SC and ST (atrocity prevention) Act have been registered against persons named in the FIR. The matter is being investigated," said Kendrapara sub-divisional police officer Nrusingh Charana Swain.