State tribal development minister Vijaykumar Gavit on Thursday said a time-bound programme will be implemented for the upliftment of the Katkari community.
He was addressing a meeting amid reports that children from tribal communities in Nashik were being used as bonded labourers in Ahmednagar district.
A 10-year-old girl from the community was found dead near her home recently and social activists had alleged that she was deployed as bonded labour, like many of her peers, after being sold to a man owning sheep.
Who are Katkari people?
The Katkari also called Kathodi, are a Scheduled Tribe from the Western Ghats of Maharashtra. They are bilingual, speaking the Katkari language, a dialect of the Marathi-Konkani languages, and they also speak Marathi. In Maharashtra the Katkari have been designated a 'particularly vulnerable tribal group' (PVTG), along with two other groups included in this sub-category: the Madia Gond and the Kolam. In the case of the Katkari this vulnerability derives from their history as a nomadic, forest-dwelling people listed by the British Raj under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, a stigma that continues to this day.
