A Dalit farm labourer was beaten to death by a rich landowner and his associates for demanding his wages of about ₹2,500 in an Amethi village, the victim’s family alleged on Sunday.

Hausila Prasad’s death comes weeks after the lynching of a Dalit in adjoining Rae Bareli — like Amethi, a Nehru-Gandhi pocket borough — on October 1 night on the charge of being a “drone thief”.

While an upper caste landlord, Shubham Singh, has been arrested over Prasad’s death, the victim’s family rued that the police had named only one accused instead of four and charged him only with culpable homicide and not murder.

Prasad, 40, had been “forcibly taken by Shubham Singh and three of his family members and friends to work in their field in the second week of October”, bereaved wife Kirti told reporters in Rambari Majare Sarai Mahesha village.

She said Prasad worked there for a week at a promised daily wage of ₹350 but was not paid.

“On October 26, he went there to demand his wages but they thrashed him with rods. When he fell unconscious, they came to our home in a jeep and threw him out near the door,” she added.

Referred from one hospital to other, Prasad, who had severe head wounds apart from other injuries, died at the King George Medical University in Lucknow on Sunday.

Circle officer Dinesh Kumar Mishra confirmed Shubham’s arrest on the charge of “culpable homicide not amounting to murder” and said the police were “conducting an inquiry”.

“We tried to organise a dharna by keeping the body on the highway but the police threatened us and forced us to complete his last rites quickly,” Manish Prasad, a relative of the victim, said.

“The police first invoked the charge of a minor brawl, and then culpable homicide not amounting to murder, against just one person. The entire village knows that at least four people beat Hausila Prasad.”

With a video of the purported lynching circulating on social media, the police arrested four men three days after the incident. They invoked culpable homicide, upgrading the charge to murder after the case received media attention.

Attacks on Dalits have been reported from other parts of Uttar Pradesh, too.

Ram Pal, 65, who was suffering from a urinary tract infection, was forced to lick his own urine from the steps of the Shitala Mata Mandir in the Kakori area of Lucknow on October 20.

The state BJP’s Scheduled Caste Morcha president, Ramchandra Kannaujia, claimed that past governments used to ignore such incidents. “We take quick action against the accused to set an example,” he said.