Dalit youth tortured, killed in Uttarakhand over friendship with upper caste girl
Dehradun: An 18-year-old Dalit youth, Ketan Lal, was beaten to death in Uttarakhand after members of an upper caste girl’s family assaulted him for befriending their daughter, exposing India’s entrenched caste hierarchy and rising atrocities against Scheduled Castes.
According to Kashmir Media Service, Ketan Lal had been friends with a girl from Kholgarh for six months. On June 7, he was called by her friend and lured into a room where the girl’s family locked them both and attacked them with sticks. Ketan was held captive, tortured through the night, and murdered.
His friend sustained serious injuries. Data from the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights shows Uttarakhand ranked 18th among Indian states for crimes against SCs/STs in 2023, accounting for 5.4% of total cases.
NCRB reported 57,789 crimes against SCs in 2023 and 55,698 in 2024, with a national crime rate of 27.7 per lakh SC population. Murder cases against SCs stood at 871 in 2024, while conviction rates remain low.
Activists said the killing mirrors past “honour” crimes in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, where Dalits have been attacked or killed for inter-caste relationships. They condemned the murder as another brutal example of caste prejudice that continues under BJP rule, leaving Dalits and minorities unsafe across India.
