Jaipur: Centre for Dalit Rights (CDR), an NGO, recently investigated a case where a Dalit woman, who had been taken to fields to clear straw in exchange for 15 kg of wheat, went missing in September this year from Sakulpura village of Karauli district. The team has concluded that the Dalit woman was burnt alive and her charred remains passed off as the body of a 17-year-old child bride who had returned to her parents' home, so the Gujjar family of the young bride, which had since married her off to another man under the Nata tradition, could get her husband and his family off their backs.Karauli Superintendent of Police Hanuman Singh Kaviya said the girl who allegedly committed suicide has since been arrested. Asked how a young girl could commit such a heinous crime, he said, "The old woman was just about 35 kg in weight - this is a young girl just a little short of turning 18 years old."An eight-member team of CDR conducted a fact-finding trip and compiled a report on November 17. Recounting the sequence of events, the report submitted by CDR says Teejo Devi, 65-year-old Dalit woman, had gone missing on September 12. When her son Vijendra went to check for her, he was told that she returned after performing the task of gathering straw in the fields of the Gujjar family.The woman's son waited two weeks and then took a written complaint to police at Masalpur in Karauli on September 26. However, an FIR had been filed on September 13 at Masalpur of a young bride's suicide - the 17-year-old girl, married as a child, had returned to the house of her parents and refused to go back to her husband. The CDR team says there is ground to conclude, after interviewing members of the victim's family, neighbours and interacting with policemen, that the body that was recovered was the Dalit woman's.Under the Nata system, a woman can be passed between different men in a span of just a few months. A woman is allowed another marriage once her first one breaks down. Often, in practice, the husband of the woman is the one to sell her to another man. Her parents too might get her married to another man in return for money. This practice is prevalent in parts of the state dominated by Scheduled Castes or Tribes.

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