Amritsar, June 27
In a bizarre incident, a woman constable entered ‘labour room’ and started beating up nine-month pregnant Dalit woman, Raj, a resident of Kuttiwal village in Ajnala tehsil, leading to the death of
her male child after delivery.
Narrating her tale of woes, the victim alleged there was theft
of jewellery in the house of landlord Dalbir Singh who had named that her brother, Jaspal Masih, was responsible for it.
Jaspal worked in fields of Dalbir as a farm hand.
The Awaz-e-Aman, an NGO, which took up the case alleged here today that the shocking incident occurred yesterday, few hours before the delivery. Mr Daniel B. Das and Mr Bhupinder Singh Sandhu of the Awaz-e-Aman said that had the police acted in time the tragedy could have been avoided.
Mr Baj Masih, a member of the NGO, who went to the house of Jaan Masih on that day found that Dalbir’s sons Kala, Pinda and daughters Mandip and Soni along with some police personnel of the Lopoke police station were beating up Raj, who was delivering a baby. He alleged that as a result of thrashing she gave birth to dead male baby.
However, when contacted, Mr Dilbagh Singh, SP (HQ), said the police personnel had gone to the house in the presence of respected villagers and nothing of this sort happened which was being alleged. He described the incident as ‘baseless’. He said they were contacting the midwife for her comments.
Mr Jaan Massih, father of Raj, was in dire need of money. What is worse Raj was compelled to leave her in law’s house by the husband six months ago. Mr Jaan claimed that to meet expenditure of delivery they approached Dalbir to get money.
He along with his wife Kashmiro went to Dalbir’s residence on June 20, he added.
However, Dalbir replied that as per his account book they (Jaan’s family) owed a few thousand rupees to him.
This started war of words between the families, which have houses in proximity. Subsequently, Jaan warned that he would stop his son from his (Dalbir’s) employment.
The aggrieved father said after learning this Dalbir levelled false allegation against Jaspal that he had stolen gold jewellery worth
