The Silgur devta temple in Pokhri village of the Jaunsar Bawar region, which witnessed unruly scenes on Friday when a mob attacked Rajya Sabha MP Tarun Vijay with stones for entering the premises with dalits, would now conduct a "long purification ritual of nine days".?
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A temple official said that they needed to conduct purifying poojas since the temple had been?
"The dev doli of Silgur Devta that was brought after a gap of almost 36 years to our village was defiled. The devta is upset. We will now undergo a nine-day stringent prayer and some purification rituals to appease it," said an official of the temple samiti.
Meanwhile, many dalits of the area have started fleeing from their homes for the fear of a backlash from the upper-caste members of the village. Almost 100 villagers converged at Doon hospital on Sunday where their leader Daulat Kunwar is admitted in the ICU. The villagers said they will not return to their area till they get a written assurance from the state home minister that their lives would be safe if they returned. "A number of young boys from our village were beaten up by upper-caste villagers because they had captured the incidents of May 20 (when mobs pelted stones at dalits) on their mobile camera phones. They were threatened not to speak about the incident either to the police or city administration," claimed Narender Singh, a villager from Pokhri where the incident had occurred.
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Meanwhile, Saraswati Kunwar, the wife of injured dalit leader Daulat Kunwar, blamed the state home minister Pritam Singh for supporting the attrocities against dalits. "It's ironic that Pritam Singh who is from the Chakrata area, didn't even bother to visit Kunwar who is battling for his life in the hospital. It clearly shows that there is disdain and contempt against dalits ingrained in his mind." She added that the head of the khat (group of 10-15 villages) had also issued a notice in the village that "anyone who speaks in favour of dalits will face the same fate as Tarun Vijay and Daulat Kunwar."
A group of dalits also burnt an effigy of Pritam Singh in the Doon hospital premises. While a probe has been ordered on the incident, human rights activists say they are not convinced it will be a "fair one." "There is just one dalit woman in the probe committee while rest all are upper-caste men. It raises suspicion on the authenticity of the probe," said a human-rights activist from Vikas Nagar.