Watch: Dalit woman and her son shoved, tossed around by a mob in Gujarat

A Dalit woman and her six-year-old son were shoved and abused by a crowd of villagers in Gujarat’s Junagadh district on June 8, allegedly because the villagers wanted her to quit her job as the supervisor of midday meals at the local school.

A video of the incident has been circulating for the past week, and caught the attention of national social media on Wednesday after Dalit rights leader Jignesh Mevani tweeted it.

The woman, Prabhaben Vala, had been working as the midday meal supervisor at the primary school in Ghantiya village for the past 10 years. On June 9, a day after the incident, the local block development office suspended Vala from her job.

For the past six months, Vala had been having several disputes with the school’s principal, who had allegedly been refusing to sign her daily reports logging the number of children who availed the midday meals. Three months ago, Vala filed a police case against the principal, Kalubhai Thakrani, accusing him of caste-based atrocities.

No arrests were made in that case, and when the school re-opened on June 6, Vala claims the principal refused to give her the key to the midday meal room.

Vala sent a written complaint about her exclusion to the block development office, and when she arrived at the school on June 8, she was allegedly abused by Thakrani and a crowd of other villagers. “The principal started pushing her out of the school and my wife protested and fought back,” Vala’s husband Girishbhai told Scroll.in. “Then Thakrani called a number villagers and they all started fighting. They even threw our son around.”

Girishbhai claims the taluka police did not immediately register Vala’s complaint against the mob. An official at the Vanthali taluka police station, meanwhile, said that they had registered a case against Vala on the basis of a complaint by Thakrani and a video that showed Vala hurling abuses at the crowd.

According to an official at the Vanthali block development office, this case was one of the reasons it suspended Vala from her job. “The other reason was that on June 9, the villagers shut down the school and claimed that they would not let it re-open if she remained in the job,” said JM Makwan, an official at the block development office.

According to Girishbhai, the whole problem started after a new sarpanch was elected in the village six months ago. “The sarpanch’s sister-in-law has been working as a cook under my wife, but now the sarpanch wants her to replace my wife as the supervisor,” said Girishbhai. “That’s why the principal has been trying to make trouble for my wife.”

On Wednesday, with the help of Dalit rights activists, Vala was finally able to register a First Information Report with the Vanthali police against the school principal.