By Guest Author
Bhaskar Basava & Bhavani Etikala
On April 16, while repairing a motor at the house of a dominant caste member Velisetti Jalla Babu, Pallapu Suresh Babu, who belongs to the Mala community (Scheduled Castes), was electrocuted in Mallam village of Andhra Pradesh’s Pithapuram constituency. He was declared dead en route to the hospital.
Grieving his sudden death, the Dalit community rallied together, calling for compensation to support his surviving wife and two young children. But the mobilisation triggered a backlash from the Kapu community to which Velisetti Jalla Babu belongs.
They initiated a social boycott against the Dalits in an act of collective punishment.
Other Backwards Classes (OBC) groups in the village imitated the Kapu community, classified under Other Castes (OC), and refused to provide services to the Mala community members. Not just denying them access, residents of the village were instructed not to accept goods or services from people of the Mala community.
According to activists and initial reports, Jalla Babu, the Kapu farmer, agreed to pay a compensation of ₹2,75,000 to Suresh Babu’s family with the police as the mediators. On April 18, he was supposed to pay ₹75,000 and promised to pay the remaining two lakhs over the next two months. However, when politically and socially influential elders of the Kapu community learned that Babu had agreed to pay the compensation, they were displeased.
An elected member to the Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituencies (MPTC) from the village, who belongs to Kapu caste spoke to Maktoob on condition of anonymity and claimed that the boycott was an “individual decision” by community members, not a collective one taken by the entire village (other backward and upper castes).
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here.