AGRA: A day after his plea seeking a court’s intervention into a row over his baraat route was dismissed, Dalit groom Sanjay Jatav said if police and administration didn’t provide him an alternative route, the Dalit community won’t allow wedding processions of upper caste people pass through their area.
On Friday, the Allahabad high court had dismissed his petition seeking its intervention to allow him to take his baraat through a Thakur dominated area in Kasganj’s Nizampur village. The wedding is scheduled for April 20.
Sanjay and his fiancée Sheetal claim that upper caste men in the village threatened them and refused to allow the horse-led wedding procession in the village, which has only 50 Dalit houses and over 300 upper caste families.
Sanjay is a block-level panchayat member from Basai Bawas village of Hathras.
Talking to TOI, the groom said, “After the court's verdict, I met Kasganj district magistrate R P Singh and gave him a proposal for two alternative routes. If the administration and police don’t agree, the Dalit community will never allow any Thakur wedding procession to pass through their area.”
“Like all other citizens of the country, I am entitled to a regular wedding. Discrimination like this in 2018 is unacceptable. I will now move the Supreme Court in this regard,” he said.
While dismissing his plea, the HC advised Sanjay to either file an FIR in local police station or appeal in a local court to file the FIR.
Reacting to the court's order, Sanjay said, “I won’t file any FIR against anybody. I don’t want to flare up communal tension.”
Kasganj superintendent of police Piyush Srivastava said, “We will discuss the matter with district authorities and arrive at a solution so that the wedding is conducted peacefully. Police are also willing to provide security to the Dalit family during the wedding.”
Local MLA, BJP’s Devender Singh Rajput, however, claimed the row was politically motivated. “The Thakur community is ready to help Sanjay in his wedding, but he is unnecessarily trying to instigate the local community. He has political motive behind this entire episode,” he said.
