e n

The Gokulraj Murder Case: The story of a conviction under the SC-ST Act

On March 8, a Madurai special court followed up on the conviction of 10 men for the murder of a young Dalit student by sentencing all of them to life imprisonment. Invoking Ambedkar, the presiding judge said that ‘if caste has to be broken, intercaste marriage is the only solution’, writes V. Geetha

In 2015, young Gokulraj, a promising engineering student, was abducted from the famous Arthanariswara temple in Thiruchengode, in Tamil Nadu’s Namakkal district, where he had been talking with a female friend, and subsequently cruelly murdered: his tongue was severed and he was decapitated.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: The Gokulraj Murder Case: The story of a conviction under the SC-ST Act

About The Author

V. Geetha

V. Geetha is a writer, translator, social historian and activist who has written widely in English and Tamil on modern Tamil history, caste, gender, education and civil rights. She is most recently the author of 'Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India' (Palgrave Macmillan). Geetha has co-written, with S.V. Rajadurai, essays on the Dravidian movement and politics published in the ‘Economic and Political Weekly’, and the book, ‘Towards a Non Brahmin Millennium: From Iyothee Thass to Periyar’. They have also authored monographs on Western Marxism, including a comprehensive volume on the life and thought of Antonio Gramsci.

Related Articles

‘Dhamaal 4’ and the problem with laughing at the margins
Indian comedy is capable of laughter-filled entertainment that does not depend, like in ‘Dhamaal 4’, on body-shaming, misogyny or the caricaturing of labouring and...
Who owns a woman’s story? Rumours, reputation and resistance in ‘Maa Behen’
Maa Behen (Mother-Sister) are everyday North Indian words that serve a double function – the most sacred of kin relations and simultaneously the category...
When Jotirao Phule came to Dayanand Saraswati’s rescue
Inviting Dayanand to Pune and helping him expand his footprint in Maharashtra was a pragmatic move on the part of Ranade and other Brahmin...
Vijay Varma plays his part in Nagraj Manjule’s realistic portrait of 1960s-70s Bombay
‘Matka King’ is a confident, character-first swing by a director in the process of expanding his range. It celebrates the intoxicating dream of upward...
Bastar’s aspirational Adivasi schoolchildren have few viable futures
This contradiction lies beneath the language of ‘mainstreaming’. State institutions encourage young people to become disciplined, aspirational, and future-oriented, even while the opportunities available...