Gandhinagar:
A 21-year-old Dalit man was beaten to death allegedly by a group of men belonging to the upper caste Patel community for attending a garba event in Gujarat's Anand district on Sunday, the police said.
At about 4 am on Sunday, Jayesh Solanki was reportedly sitting with his cousin Prakash Solanki and two other Dalit men near a temple where a garba dance and other Navaratri festivities were held in their Bhadrania village, when one of the men accused of attacking him allegedly made "derogatory remarks about their caste", the police said quoting a complaint.
The Patel man allegedly said Dalits "do not have the right to watch garba and made casteist remarks," an officer at the Bhadran police station said, adding that he then asked other people to join him.
The attackers allegedly thrashed the Dalit men and banged Jayesh's head against a wall, the police officer said. The young man was taken to a hospital in Karamsad, where he died later in the morning.
A senior police officer AM Patel said it did not appear to be a pre-planned attack. "Jayesh was killed in the heat of the moment, as there was no rivalry between him and the accused. We are investigating the case from all angles. The accused will be arrested soon," he said.
Recently, two Dalit men were allegedly thrashed by members of the Rajput community for "sporting a moustache" in two separate incidents at a village near the state capital, Gandhinagar.
"You cannot become a Rajput by just sporting a moustache," the victim was told.
The state had witnessed massive protests in July last year over the brutal thrashing of four Dalit men at a village in Una town.
