New Delhi, India - India's police and legal system had failed "deplorably" to protect people from the country's lowest castes, an official commission said on Tuesday, suggesting exclusive courts be set up to ensure speedy justice.
Formerly called untouchables, the country's Scheduled Castes or Dalits make up around 160 million of mainly Hindu India's 1.1-billion population.
Despite special laws to protect them, they continue to face discrimination and violence, especially in rural areas.
Crimes against Dalits, including rape, murder and social boycott by upper castes, have lower conviction rates than the national average, at around 29 percent against 42 percent, the National Commission For Scheduled Castes said.
"We must admit...the deplorable, negative role of our men in uniform who, instead of protecting the victim, protect the culprits by inaction, inefficiency and rent-seeking," said Fakir Bhai Vaghela, the vice-chairman of the commission.
He was speaking to top police officers and officials from Indian states at a meeting organised by the commission, an autonomous body set up by the government to protect the interests of the disadvantaged.
The panel proposed "exclusive courts" that would deal with only cases of atrocities and discrimination against Dalits to speed up convictions which can take years.
"Seventy percent of people who commit crimes against Dalits are getting off," Phool Chand Verma, a NCSC member, said. "The police also do not register cases therefore atrocities continue."
In Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, around 50,000 caste-related cases against Dalits are pending. But only four have been resolved by fast-track courts since 2002.
Dalits in rural areas were often discouraged by police from filing reports, Verma said, adding the actual number of attacks or incidents of discrimination in 2005 -- the year for which figures were last compiled -- were probably around 150,000.
Though India has reserved government jobs and college seats for Dalits and a Dalit is currently the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the community remains among the poorest and most socially and economically deprived.
In December, a hungry Dalit girl from the eastern state of Bihar had the fingers of her right hand chopped off by an upper-caste land owner for taking spinach leaves from his field.
In another case, all upper-caste passengers walked out of a bus in southern India when a Dalit got on, the commission said, according to a report it received last year.
"It is to be regretted that even after 57 years since untouchability was 'abolished'...we are unable to implement successfully basic provisions (of laws protecting Dalits)," Vaghela said.