Among the group of Dalit villagers from Najafgarh camping on the lawns of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee office are seventy-year-old Chhanno and 20-year-old Rani. Both were molested on Holi.

So were 25 other women of their village. Rajjo, Indra, Bimri and four others still have bruises on their their hips and abdomen, deep cuts on their feet and face. The attackers had forcefully entered their houses Dalits and molested the women. When the men tried to protest and protect their women, they too were mercilessly beaten up.

They came back in the evening to burst crackers in the narrow lanes of the Dalit colony in Ishapur village in Najafgarh, West Delhi, inhabited by 150 Dalit and 3,000 Jat families. The Dalits say they are now being threatened for complaining to the Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan.

Staging a sit-in on the lawns of the DPCCoffice, the villagers refuse to go back home unless the SHO of Jafarpur Kala Police Station is transferred and they are given adequate protection from their ``upper-caste tormentors.''

Among the hurt -- there are at least 15 of them -- is a BSF jawan, Ashok Singh. He had come home to celebrate Holi with his family. But three days after the festival of colours, his head bandage is bloodstained. ``I was at the border, doing my job sincerely. Still the women of my village -- and my own house -- were molested on Holi. And the police refuse to take action because they are sons of rich zamindars with political contacts. I can't believe this,'' Singh says.

On Holi, four upper-caste Jat youths came to the area ``where Dalit families have been living since Indira Gandhi's time''. According to the villagers, their target was newly-wed Rani, 18. They tried to ``forcefully and indecently'' put colour on Rani. As Rani ran indoors to escape the youths, they followed her in. Her mother-in-law, Rajjo, tried to stop them.``Then they tried to molest Rajjo. All the while using filthy casteist language against the women for daring to resist them,'' said Mahindra Singh, one of the villagers who works with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.

By then the men got to their rescue and drove the youths away. But not for long. Within half-an-hour they came back in larger number -- 15 of them armed with sticks, stones and shovels -- and ran amok. They forcefully entered the houses, molesting and beating up Dalit women, breaking whatever came their way and beating up men who tried put up a resistance.

CPI leader Bardhan has already written to the Delhi Chief Minister and Union Home Minister L K Advani. The villagers went to meet Bardhan after they were allegedly threatened by SHO Baljit Singh for complaining to Dikshit for refusing to file a ``proper FIR'' or arresting the culprits. ``The police registered a diluted case. The incident happened at 2 p.m. But a PCR gypsy came at 5.30 p.m., they didn't even help to take the injured tothe hospital,'' says one of the villagers.