In yet another brutal assault on the community, three Dalits were mowed down by tractors driven by members of the Jat community in Rajasthan over a land dispute.
The incident happened in Dangawas in Rajasthan's Nagaur district and left many injured.
The killings occured after a panchayat meeting called to settle the decade-old land dispute between the two communities on Thursday took a violent turn after some Dalits, fearing for their lives, fired at two men, killing one of them, according to The Times of India.
Angered members of Dangawas's Jat communtiy then started attacking Dalit families in retaliation, by bulldozing their houses and chasing them in tractors, which eventually led to three people being crushed to death.
Some of the women who were assaulted by the Jats in the melee revealed chilling accounts of the incident.
"Four attackers tried to remove my 'ghaghra' (skirt) and tried to thrust a stick inside," one woman was quoted as saying by TOI, while another said, "They pulled me by my hair for about 50 metres, tore off my clothes and hit my legs with iron-rods".
The land dispute is a decades-old fight over a 20ha farm land that is claimed by some Dalit families but contested by a Jat family.
Violence continued even on Friday as hundreds of armed men prevented doctors from treating the injured, according to the report.
(16/05/15): Nagaur (Rajasthan): Clash between Jats & Dalits turned violent. 3 Dalits allegedly crushed under tractors pic.twitter.com/3TveYLVgEj
— ANI (@ANI_news) May 16, 2015
