Tensions have been simmering in Kolhapur for the last two days after a 13-year-old boy belonging to a scheduled caste was allegedly brutally beaten and paraded naked from his house to the gram panchayat office for holding the hand of an upper caste girl and offering chocolates to her.
“The families of the boy and girl knew each other. A month back, the boy offered a chocolate to the girl while they were returning from school and held her hand,” a police officer from Ajara station told TOI.
When the girl came home she told her parents about the incident after which tensions between the two families erupted, he added.
The girl was sent away to Mumbai to her uncle’s residence as a “precautionary measure”. The uncle came to the village on Friday. He along with a friend allegedly took the boy to a room, locked him up and beat him.
Later, they stripped the boy naked and paraded him from his house to the gram panachayat office, hurling abuses at him and his family on the way, police said.
The Kolhapur police have arrested two relatives of the girl under several sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Scheduled Cates/ Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. Meanwhile the boy was rushed to a local hospital for treatment.
According to the TOI report, the police have claimed that the situation in the village has been brought under control, after a meeting of members of both communities was convened on Saturday.
A police contingent has also been deployed in the village to restore peace and order in the area.
The two suspects have been booked under sections 452 (house trespass and preparation for hurt, assault or wrongful restraint), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (criminal intimidation of the IPC and several sections of the SC/ST Act.
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