Pooja Sakat, a class 9 student was found dead in a well near her house on April 22, 2018. She was the sole witness in the Bhima-Koregaon violence.
For a family which has lost their belonging in a Bhima-Koregaon violence, losing their daughter came as a scar to their lives. But little did they know that now they will also be losing their right to reside.
Pooja Sakat, a class 9 student was found dead in a well near her house on April 22, 2018. Sakat was the sole witness in the Bhima-Koregaon violence that took place on January 1 this year. She had also named nine accused. The family had said that she was being pressurized to retract her statement.
As her death stirred the political pot, the family started to receive death threats. The family apart from demanding justice has also demanded rehabilitation in Pune. However, it came as a shock to the grieving family that the residents of the village where they lived for around a decade want them ostracized.
According to a Pune Mirror report, the villagers discussed the proposal to ostracize the Sakat family on Monday in the Gram Sabha. The villagers presented the resolution before the Gram Panchayat and submitted the letter before the sarpanch.
The members of the Gram Sabha said that the father of the deceased does not originally belong to the village and has migrated there a decade ago. The members also claim that during their stay in the village, Sakat has troubled the villagers on several occasions. “We want the whole family to be rehabilitated outside Koregaon Bhima. The village is being tainted by one person,” one of the villagers told Pune Mirror.
The villagers even feel that there is no foul play in Puja’s death. Even the Sarpanch of the village expressed the same sentiments. She said that the villagers helped Sakat family when they had no proof of residence, but now they have turned against them.
One of the villagers who had signed the resolution claimed that Suresh earlier lived in Sanaswadi from where he was ousted. After that, he relocated to Koregaon Bhima. The villager claimed that Sakat constantly files atrocity cases against other villagers. “We had cleared and submitted a resolution to this effect to the home minister. The family should not stay in the village,” he said.
On the other hand, Sakat family who is fighting to bring justice to Puja, are also worried about earning their bread. Suresh Sakat who was working as a masseur lost his home from where he operated in the riot. His son used to ride and rent the auto-rickshaw. According to him, after the incident, the villagers stopped communication and shunned the family.
However, the family has no plans to leave Bhima-Koregaon. Suresh’s brother, Vasant Sakat said, “This is ostracism. While we were demanding that we should be rehabilitated in Pune, if this is the case we will demand rehabilitation in the village itself. They cannot decide who gets to stay and who doesn’t.”
Meanwhile, the government is figuring out ways to rehabilitate the family as they were living on an encroached area. Deputy mayor Siddharth Dhende, a member of the Republican Party of India (RPI), said that the party is considering relocating them under the basic services for urban poor (BSUP) schemes that are built by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC).
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