Gir Somnath (Gujarat), March 17 A special court on Tuesday sentenced five convicts in the 2016 Una flogging case, in which four Dalit men were beaten for attempting to skin the carcass of a cow, to five years in prison and imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on each of them.
A day earlier, the special court in Veraval convicted five individuals and acquitted 35 others in the flogging case, while the case against a police officer was dropped due to his death. The trial against a minor is pending.
The incident, which occurred in Mota Samadhiyala village, triggered widespread protests across the country after videos of the attack went viral.
On Tuesday, the court of special SC/ST atrocity cases judge JJ Pandya sentenced the five accused to a five-year prison term under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
In addition to the maximum jail term of five years, the court also sentenced them to three years under sections 323 and 324 of the Indian Penal Code, one year under section 342, and two years under section 504. All sentences will run concurrently.
Defence lawyer Vijay Kumar said that four of these five convicts have already served more than six years in prison, while another has been in prison for the last four years and two months, and will be required to serve the remaining term.
The convicts are Ramesh Jadhav, Rakesh Joshi, Nagji Vaniya, Pramodgiri Goswami, and Balwatgiri Goswami, while the trial against a minor is pending.
The court examined 260 witnesses during the course of the trial.
The IPC sections under which the accused were convicted deal with causing simple hurt, voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons, wrongful confinement, and intentional insult.
They were also found guilty under sections 3 (1)(D) and 3 (1)(E)(R)(S)(U) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
However, they were acquitted under IPC sections 307 (attempt to murder), 397 (robbery), 365 (kidnapping), 147 (rioting), 355 (assault to dishonour a person), and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) under which they were charged.
The incident occurred at Mota Samadhiyala village near the town of Una in the Gir-Somnath district on July 11, 2016, when four Dalit youths, as part of their traditional profession, were skinning the carcass of a cow that had died earlier in another village.
The accused, self-proclaimed vigilantes, beat up the youths, who were then illegally detained and further beaten by police personnel.
It was alleged that the four Dalits were beaten for almost 4-5 hours. Police were allegedly involved in the incident and forged some FIR-related documents to help them.
Villagers from nearby areas attempted to rescue the Dalit youths, but were threatened by the accused. The villagers then called the police control rooms in Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad.