The Phaltan Gramin police station in Satara district have registered a First Information Report (FIR) in connection with the alleged gang-rape of a tribal woman from Raigad district, who is also a bonded labourer. They have also arrested one accused—Hasan Latif Shaikh alias Balu Sheth—of the five named by the woman in the FIR.

mid-day’s report on July 7 stated that the crime came to light when the woman approached tribal leader Vivek Pandit, who is the chairman of Tribal Development Review Committee in Maharashtra. He informed the cops of the matter, and a team from Mandvi police station recorded her statement on Wednesday night.

A Satara police team arrived in Virar East on Thursday and took the 28-year-old Dalit woman to register an FIR against Hasan Latif Shaikh alias Balu Sheth and others. The woman and the police reached Phaltan on Thursday evening.

The FIR at Phaltan Gramin police station has been registered under sections 376, 376-D, 323, 506 of Indian Penal Code, provisions of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 and Bonded Labour System Abolition Act, 1976.  “The other accused are being identified and we will arrest them soon,” said an officer attached to Phaltan Gramin police station.

The shanties (left, above) that the labourers live in. Pics/Hanif Patel

The survivor claimed that she was raped at a place where she had gone with the family to work in a charcoal manufacturing unit at Phaltan. She somehow managed to escape the crime scene and reached her hometown and later met Pandit at Usgaon, Virar East. “The procedure to record her statement was completed around midnight on Wednesday,” Pandit told mid-day.

An officer from Mandvi police station said, “The survivor was so badly traumatised that she took a lot of time to recall the incident and narrate her ordeal to us. We, in the presence of a woman police officer, patiently waited for her to recall everything, as the issue was highly sensitive in nature and the woman belongs to the Katkari community, a primitive tribe.”

Officials at the spot to take stock of the bonded labour situation

“After our officers coaxed the survivor, she told us that she was raped by five men. So, we have recorded her statement and all the documents have been handed over to a team of cops from Satara. The survivor has gone to Satara with the officers for further course of action,” said an officer from Mandvi police station.

Sources at Satara police station told mid-day that the survivor’s two children and in-laws were rescued on Wednesday night. “They are all fine,” said an officer.

Meanwhile, an activist Sneha Dube told mid-day that after the cops detained Shaikh on Wednesday night, ‘his [Shaikh’s] wife came to the charcoal manufacturing facility and intimidated other 20 families who were bonded labourers,’ Dube said.

A shanty that was destroyed on Thursday night

The workers of Shramjeevi Sangathana, which claims to work for the welfare of tribals in Maharashtra, said that the bonded labourers had been forced to live in extremely inhuman conditions. “The shanties are in deplorable condition,” said the source, who added, “A few shanties, made of tree branches covered with plastic sheets and tattered cloth to withstand rain, were destroyed by the charcoal manufacturing facility owner on Thursday night.”

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