Six persons were sentenced to two years in prison by a special court for preventing a Dalit woman cook from preparing food for children at a government school in 2018.
The court trying SC/ST Act cases handed the punishment to P Palanisamy Gounder, N Sakthivel, R Shanmugam, C Vellingiri, A Duraisamy and V Seetha Lakshmi for caste discrimination and related offences.
According to the prosecution, P Pappal, 44, a cook at the Government Higher Secondary School in Thirumalai Goundampalayam, faced discrimination from the six people, who were parents and objected to her cooking for the children. The Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front held protests after her discrimination and subsequent transfer.
A complaint was lodged on behalf of Pappal in July that year. Cheyur police registered a case against 35 people under various provisions of the SC/ST Act and arrested eight of them.
Following this, the Cheyur police registered a case against 35 people under various provisions of the SC/ST Act and arrested eight of them.
During the trial on Friday, the Judicial Magistrate M Suresh convicted six and sentenced them to two years jail term and imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on each. Twenty-five others were acquitted due to lack of evidence while four died during the trial. All six have been lodged at the Coimbatore Central Prison.
Senior advocate P P Mohan, who represented Pappal, later told reporters that the BDO and some police officials who had transferred the cook following protests by a section of parents needed to be punished in order to render complete justice to the victim.
