•On October 15, 2002, five Dalits were lynched by police in Jhajjar district. It was only after it hit national headlines that the Haryana government ordered an inquiry.
•On October 10, 2004, a married couple, Sonia and Rampal, were ordered by a khap panchayat of Asanda village in Jhajjar district to dissolve their marriage and treat each other as brother-sister. They were forced to seek protection from Punjab & Haryana High Court as the district police and administration failed to act.
• On February 22, 2006, over 50 Dalit families of Farmana village in Sonepat district were forced to flee their village following an attack by upper-caste villagers.
• And figures compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for 2005-06 say 288 cases of atrocities against the Dalits took place in Haryana. These include 10 murders, 35 rape cases, and 15 kidnappings.
BUT despite all this, and against pressure from the National Human Rights Commission and rights groups, successive governments in Haryana have refused to set up a state human rights commission.
Earlier this year, Chief Secretary Prem Prashant asserted that “Haryana is a small state and no violation of human rights has been made here.” And on January 18, 2006, the government had told the Punjab & Haryana High Court that it had no intention of setting up a state human rights commission.
The same stand was repeated in November this year during the hearing of a public interest litigation filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) asking the high court to direct the government to set up a commission.
... contd.
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