Rajasthan: Cook throws away food served by Dalit girls

Jaipur: After the incident of the death of a Dalit boy allegedly thrashed by his teacher, one more case of alleged anti-Dalit discrimination has been reported in Rajasthan, where a cook of a government school threw away food served by two Dalit girls.

The incident happened in Bharodi village of Gogunda block of Udaipur on Friday. The police have arrested the cook on the complaint filed by the girls.

"We arrested a cook for not letting students eat mid-day meal served by the 2 Meghwal community girls in the Government Upper Primary School of Bharodi village," said Deputy SP Bhupendra Singh, who is investigating the case.

The girls said in their complaint that they were serving Dal and Chapaties during the mid-day meal in the school on Friday when the cook, Laluram Gurjar, told the students to not eat the food served by them as they are of lower caste. The cook also threw away the food.

The Deputy SP said that in the preliminary investigation, the allegation seems to be true and based on this, the police have arrested the cook.

The school's principal and mid-day meal in-charge Shivlal Sharma said that the girl students had taken permission to serve Dal themselves. The matter escalated due to the cook's old thinking, but he added that the school would not allow any kind of discrimination.

On a related note, the state government has ordered a sudden inspection of the distribution of mid-day meals in the schools on September 6-7 and directions have been given to check that there is no discrimination in the schools.