Chennai: The Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front (TNUEF) has said that a separate law is necessary for caste-related violence in the state.
State general secretary of the front, Samuel Raj, in a statement, said that this is necessary to tackle caste-related violence.
He said that this was an old demand and that they were reiterating it. The Madras High Court awarding triple life imprisonment to the culprits in the murder of Scheduled Caste youth Gokulraj was due to the efforts of lawyer B.B. Mohan and not by any intervention from the Tamil Nadu government.
Samuel Raj said that the state government has not created any special cells despite the Madras High Court’s direction in 2016 for the enactment of a separate law to prevent murders of inter-caste couples and an eight-point guideline to protect the couples.
He said that the state government in response to a writ petition filed by the TNUEF had stated that special cells have been created and furnished phone numbers of officers in charge of each district but nothing had happened and killings of intercaste couples have been continuing unabated.
The TNUEF general secretary said that there was no response from the authorities to the RTI filed on the condition of special cells created by the government.
The organisation also passed a resolution which called upon the Tamil Nadu government to take into account the private members bill introduced by CPI-M’s A. Soundararajan in 2015 named ‘Prevention of murder, crime and compulsion in the name of Honour and Tradition 2015’ Bill and enact a law to prevent caste killings.
IANS