“A Dalit cannot be in the RSS because our ideology never matches,” the journalist, author and social activist Bhanwar Meghwanshi told me on a phone call. Meghwanshi was also part of a committee constituted by Dalit rights and civil rights organisations to look into the matter of Jitender’s death. “The RSS is willing to consider us as Hindus, but it wants to restrict us to the same old caste hierarchies,” he continued. “So Jitender or any other Dalit, apart from political reasons, cannot be linked to RSS because of this massive ideological difference.”

Two weeks after Jitender’s death, local Rajpurohits organised a rally to demand the release of Suraj and Ramesh. “There were many workers and leaders of the RSS in that rally,” Satish Kumar told me. Kumar is the co-founder of Dalit Manavadhikar Kendra Samiti, a Dalit rights organisation. “They were wearing saffron outfits and chanting ‘Jai Shree Ram’.”

On that June morning, Suraj and his friend Kamlesh Rajpurohit got off a motorbike and began to abuse Jitender. They called him casteist slurs like “neech” and “kamin koda.” They started to hit Jitender with an iron rod, grabbing his neck and tearing at his clothes. “How can you look in our eyes?” they demanded. In the melee, Jitender escaped back home, but both Suraj and Kamlesh followed him into his house, and continued the assault.

Jitender’s mother Sugna Devi tried to intervene. Suraj and Kamlesh hit her and tore her clothes as well. Alerted by the commotion, neighbours rushed into the house to extricate Jitender and his mother, but Suraj and Kamlesh started pelting stones at them, too. When they left at last, they issued an open threat to everyone who had come to save Jitender. They would set his house on fire, they said.

These allegations are in an FIR that Jitender filed after the assault. In it, Jitender attested: “It is clear that Suraj Singh and his friends Kamlesh Singh Rajpurohit and Chandan Singh have a sense of enmity against Meghwals because of which, it became difficult for us to live in the village. Suraj Singh and his friends need to be arrested as soon as possible otherwise they are a huge threat to us.”

Suraj and his friends were charged under provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Soon after the case was registered, the Rajpurohits of Barwa began to protest against the Meghwals. On his TikTok account, where he went by the handle ‘kingofgorwad01,’ Suraj, 26 years old then, posted a video declaring a boycott of the Meghwals. No Meghwal would henceforth be allowed to hold a social function in Barwa village, he proclaimed.

The Rajpurohits exerted pressure on Jitender’s family to withdraw the police complaint. On 25 June 2020, Jitender wrote to Pali’s Deputy Superintendent of Police, informing him of death threats from the accused and their families.

Suraj and his friends were let out on bail within days of their arrest. Om told me that they were released on the basis of a Rajasthan government notification directing the grant of interim bail and special parole to prisoners over the Covid outbreak. Devender Singh, Bali police station’s Station House Officer (SHO), confirmed this. “When the case was filed,” Devender said, “Suraj was absconding for some time. We caught him, but he remained in jail for just two-three days before getting bail.”

On 8 April 2020, a High-Powered Committee of the Rajasthan government had recommended amending the Rajasthan Prisoners Release on Parole Rules, 1958, “for immediate easing of the population inside prison cells.” But this benefit was meant to be extended only to those who had displayed good behaviour when released on parole previously. The interim bail relaxation was to be given only after assessment by an Undertrial Review Committee.

On 6 August 2020, Suraj filed a petition in the Rajasthan High Court to quash the FIR by Jitender. On the court’s website, the case’s status is showing as pending.

Rajasthan regularly alternates between electing the state’s largest parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, to power. Both are dominated by privileged-caste leaders, and in recent years, the state has seen no appreciable difference in caste crimes under either government.

In National Crime Records Bureau reports, Rajasthan consistently ranks poorly when it comes to crimes against Scheduled Castes. Data from the last three years reflects a discouraging trend: 4607 crimes against Scheduled Castes in 2018, 6794 in 2019, 7017 in 2020. According to a report by the Rajasthan State Crime Record Bureau (RSCRB), there were 7524 crimes against Dalits in 2021. Sixty-five Dalits were murdered here in 2019; 84 in 2020, and 85 in 2021.

The rape data within caste crimes is also appalling. On 15 March this year, the very day that Jitender was killed, a 26-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly gang-raped at gunpoint in front of her husband and children in Dholpur district. In August 2021, a 16-year-old Dalit girl was allegedly gang-raped and blackmailed for money in Alwar district.

And in March 2016, the body of 17-year-old Delta Meghwal had been found in the water tank of the Jain Adarsh Teacher Training Institute in Nokha town of Bikaner district. The incident led to outrage in the Dalit community across India. (More than five years later, in October 2021, a POCSO court held physical instructor Vijender Singh guilty of kidnapping, rape and the abetment of Delta’s suicide.)

“That was Suraj and one of his friends, Ramesh Singh,” Harish said. “They stabbed Jitender three times on the back and neck before we fell from the bike. Since the bike was slow, I didn’t sustain any major injuries.” As soon as they fell, Suraj and Ramesh stabbed Jitender 20 to 30 times, Harish remembered.

As he was being viciously attacked, Harish told me, Jitender said he would take the 2020 complaint back if his life was spared. “Ab upar jaake lena case waapis,” Suraj reportedly said. Now go up to heaven and take the case back.

The attack took place on a busy road. After Suraj and Ramesh zoomed off, Harish flagged a four-wheeler on the way to Bali. “He was bleeding heavily,” Harish said, “I took him back to Bali Government Hospital. I didn’t have a contact number for his family members, so I told one of my friends, Rajkumar, to inform them.”

Jitender lost blood rapidly from multiple wounds on his body. From Bali, he was transported to a bigger hospital in Sumerpur, about 30km away. But he died on the way, before the sun had set that evening.

The FIR filed by Jitender’s family contains details of what he told Om on his deathbed. Jitender was convinced that the attack had been in the works. “In 2020, we filed a case against Suraj under the SC/ST Act. Suraj, along with his friend Ramesh, followed me when I was coming home. They knew the time and the route we take to get home. They were on a bike which was registered in Gujarat.” Suraj had been working in a cloth shop in the city of Surat in the neighbouring state. It turned out that Ramesh and he had ridden about 800km on their motorbike to kill Jitender.

“They used words like ‘dedh,’ ‘kamin,’ ‘neech’ for me,” Jitender said on his deathbed, according to the FIR. “‘How come you, being a Dalit, can file a case against us?’ they said. I started to shout, and the locals heard and started to gather at the spot. So Suraj and his friend left the spot, leaving their sharp knives behind.”

SHO Devender Singh said the police took strong action against the accused. “We arrested them under the officer scheme which is meant for heinous crimes,” he said. “This guarantees a fast punishment. Our investigation revealed that Suraj killed Jitender only to take revenge for the case he filed in 2020.”

Achal Singh Deora, the case’s investigating officer, was convinced there was no larger conspiracy at play. “We have arrested both the accused and apart from them, no one is involved,” he said.

But people like Kishan Meghwal believe many others from the Rajpurohit community were involved from the start.

Kishan, who is based in Jodhpur, is the state convenor of the Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch. “How can it be possible that two people simply came from another state a day earlier and killed Jitender?” he said. “According to the police, Suraj left Surat on 13 March. When they started their journey from Surat to Barwa, they switched off their phones and left them in Surat.”

“On their way, they called many relatives and friends from numbers that belonged to other people. The police did not take that into account.” he continued. “Now the police say that these two people are only involved in the crime but we think that there are more involved: people who followed Jitender to know his timetable, asked around about him, and helped Suraj and Ramesh to stay in the village.”

“After committing the crime, via Takhtgarh and Aaroh, the accused reached Shri Kheteshwar Bhagwan in Barmer district,” Kishan added—a temple built by an ascetic revered by Rajpurohits. “That is where they were arrested from. I believe others helped them reach there.”

The proximate cause for Mohan Lal’s killing was his standing for village panchayat elections, usually a stronghold of privileged-caste Rajputs, where men like Shivdan Singh could get his loyalists elected to posts reserved for candidates from Scheduled Castes. Mohan Lal’s nomination papers were rejected by the election officer on the basis of documents Shivdan had fabricated. Mohan Lal had wanted to file a case in the local court against his rejection. He was on his way to meet his lawyer when he was killed. ^[1]

Five years before this, in July 2000, Chunni Lal Meghwal of Jadan village was killed by Thakur Bhairu Singh, his sons and other family members. They used knives, axes, swords and sticks. Chunni Lal’s provocation was that he called his daughter “bai sa,” an endearment that is also an honorific, in front of privileged-caste individuals. He also rode his bicycle in front of their house. ^[2]

In the specific context of Meghwal-Rajpurohit relations, an incident from March 2016 kept cropping up in my conversations. It was Holi, and the Rajpurohits had taken out a march in Ghenri village. The procession involves a garba-like dance, locally called gair. Raju Meghwal, a man from the village, had overtaken the procession on his motorbike.

The Rajpurohits considered this an insult to their pride. They stopped Raju and beat him up. There were policemen accompanying the procession, who halted the fight and let Raju go. But, later at night, a community elder told me, 200-300 Rajpurohits went to the Meghwals’ neighbourhood and destroyed many houses. They also thrashed many Meghwal people, including children, women and the elderly.

“It is very shocking to see what has been happening with Dalits in Pali district over the last 20 years, in the 21st century,” Suraj Kumar Bauddh, founder of a Dalit rights organisation called Mission Ambedkar, said.

When I asked Bauddh why instances of violence seem to have increased, he gave me a number of reasons. “More incidents are coming to light because of the internet and social media presence,” he said. “Secondly, organisations are slowly teaching Dalits about their rights. So the new generation, especially, doesn’t want to live at the mercy of big castes. The third reason is economic growth.”

Bauddh gave the example of Jitender to stress this last point. “See, he was a health worker in a government hospital. Dalits are progressing, even if it’s at a snail’s pace. However, the upper castes, especially in the rural areas, have not progressed. When they see Dalits growing, they feel that their power is being compromised. They also see it as losing cheap labour.”

The current MLA for Bali is Pushpender Singh Ranawat of the Bharatiya Janata Party, from the Jat caste. When he came to Barwa in the wake of Jitender’s killing, the Rajpurohits boycotted him. After he raised the issue of the killing in the Rajasthan assembly, the Rajpurohits called for barring his entry into all the areas and villages they controlled.

“They are so powerful that they can even boycott a sitting MLA and order him to not come to their villages,” Kanha Ram, a taxi driver from Barwa, said. “Just imagine what they have done to the Meghwal community.”

The Rajpurohits, whose title literally means “royal priests,” are Brahmins, whose traditional occupation included conducting religious rites in Rajput kingdoms. The Meghwals are considered out of caste, lower than the lowest rung of the varna system. Oral histories suggest that their work once included clearing up the remains of dead animals, designated a highly polluting task in Hinduism. Privileged castes derogatorily refer to Meghwals as “dhedh,” thought to derive from the occupation of dragging dead animals out of the villages. ^[3]

“The Meghwals provide labour to the Rajpurohits—they work on their farms and herd their cattle,” Kanha Ram told me. “Now, some like Jitender got an education, moved out and realised that the Rajpurohits are not entitled to this labour. But those are a handful. A majority are still dependent on Rajpurohits to meet their needs.”

I discovered that the Rajpurohits were especially angered by the visit of the Bhim Army leader, Chandrashekhar Azad, a Dalit politician of national prominence. A week after the killing, Azad and thousands of his followers came to meet Jitender’s family. “Rajpurohits were unhappy that we called Azad,” Om told me. “But we never called him, he came by himself. Iske baad, unhone hamaara hookah-paani band karwaa diya”—they socially boycotted us after this incident. Many Meghwals who worked on Rajpurohit farms or in their houses lost work because of the boycott.

Locals in Barwa told me that some Meghwal families still work as bonded labour for Rajpurohits. Vinod Rajpurohit, a social activist from Barwa, confirmed this. “Nearly 15 families work as haali in the village,” he said—not for money, but foodgrains.

“There is a person who I know named Sula Ram,” Vinod said. “He used to plough a field belonging to some Rajpurohits. He was removed from his job after Jitender’s death. He had nothing to eat as he was a daily wage labourer, so he had to sell his ox. There are many other such examples.”

As part of the backlash, the Rajpurohits have recently halted the extension of a small temple that the Meghwals use for worship. I was told that Rajpurohits damaged the extended portion of the temple as it was being built. When I visited the spot, I saw that the existing temple was a mere room. I also noticed the brick foundation of what looked like a larger structure, and stacks of bricks lying idle nearby.

It was young people in the Rajpurohit community who supported Suraj, he said. “No one in the elderly supports what Suraj did. No intelligent person is supporting him.” The ideology of the younger generation was different nowadays, he lamented. “We are getting tortured,” he said. “They”—Barwa’s Meghwals—“don’t even come to work in our fields now.”