Cook in cop net for asking kids to junk meal served by Dalit girls

Udaipur: A cook was arrested on Saturday for asking the students of a government upper primary school at Bharodi village of Gogunda in Udaipur to throw away the mid-day meal served by two Dalit girls.
Students Dimple Meghwal (13) and Neema Meghwal (14) had lodged a complaint with police that cook Lalu Ram Gurjar asked other students not to have the food served by them as they belonged to a lower caste. At his instruction, the children threw away the food, police said.
The girls narrated the incident to their family members who reached the school and demanded action against the accused.
The matter, which comes under the purview of the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, is being investigated by DSP Bhupendra Singh.
Police said the cook usually asks upper caste students to serve food but on Friday, a teacher gave this responsibility to the Dalit girls.
“Usually, the cook gets the food served by students from upper caste, but on Friday, a teacher asked the Dalit girls to serve the food,” the complainants said.
In the complaint, Dimple and Neema claimed that when they served dal, Gurjar got angry and asked students why they were having food touched by the girls belonging to a lower caste, police said.
Principal and mid-day meal in-charge Shivlal Sharma said there was no discrimination in the school and children had their meals together, but the cook’s “traditional thinking” led to Friday’s unsavoury episode.
“The school’s environment is congenial as children drink water from one place and have the meals together,” Sharma said.