Police detain bus carrying Garagaparru Dalits

,Eluru: Alleged police overaction led to tense scenes at Eluru rural police station, as they detained the bus of Dalits from Garagaparru here on Friday. The Dalits came to Eluru to submit memorandum to sanction the compensation that was announced by the government under SC, ST Atrocities Act to the victims in Garagaparru, as about 84 Dalits did not receive the compensation.

However, the police obstructed the bus at the Goods Shed Road near Eluru Railway Station and diverted the bus to Eluru Rural police station. The police did not allow any Dalit, including women to get down from the bus for almost four hours.
They told the police that they boarded the bus around 6 am at Garagaparru and need to relieve themselves.

However, the police did not allow them to get down the bus. When Ethakota Kotamma, a septuagenarian got down from the bus, she was shoved away and fell to the ground. This infuriated the Dalit leaders, who started arguing with police leading to verbal confrontation.

They started dharna at the police station and demanded to allow them to go to Collectorate. This led to police arresting KVPS district secretary P Ramakrishna, DYFI district convenor G Siva Kumar and others.

When Left party leaders Nekkanti Subba Rao and others reached police station and questioned the police on detention of the Dalits, they agreed to release. Later the Garaparru Dalits took out a rally till collectorate. Later met collector K Bhaskar and submitted a representation.

He assured them that compensation amount for another 53 families would be deposited in their bank accounts. However, he said that the 84 families which were denied the compensation were not SCs and belong to BC-C.

With regards to the demand to sanction compensation of Rs.10 lakhs to the deceased Yacob, who was killed in a road accident, the collector assured them that the family member of deceased would get a ration depot to eke out his livelihood.