New Delhi: A 40-year-old Dalit farm worker, Hausila Prasad, was allegedly beaten to death by a wealthy landowner and his aides in Amethi district after he demanded unpaid wages of around Rs 2,500, his family claimed on Sunday.

The incident occurred in Rambari Majare Sarai Mahesha village, where Prasad had been working in the fields of Shubham Singh, an upper-caste landlord. According to Prasad’s wife, Kirti, Singh and three of his relatives and friends had forcibly taken her husband to work for them in mid-October, promising Rs 350 per day. Despite working for a week, he was not paid, The Telegraph reported.

“On October 26, he went there to demand his wages but they thrashed him with rods. When he fell unconscious, they came to our home in a jeep and threw him out near the door,” Kirti was quoted as saying by The Telegraph.

Prasad sustained severe head injuries and was moved between hospitals before dying at King George Medical University in Lucknow on Sunday.

Police said Singh had been arrested and charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Circle Officer Dinesh Kumar Mishra mentioned that an inquiry is ongoing.

However, Prasad’s family and villagers accused the police of protecting the culprits by naming only one accused instead of four and diluting the charges.

"The police first invoked the charge of a minor brawl, and then culpable homicide not amounting to murder, against just one person. The entire village knows that at least four people beat Hausila Prasad,”Manish Prasad, a relative of Prasad, said as per The Telegraph.

He also alleged that police pressured the family to conduct the cremation quickly and prevented them from staging a protest with the body on the highway.

After a video of the assault surfaced online, police detained four men three days after the incident, eventually upgrading the charge to murder following public and media outrage.

A few weeks ago, a Dalit man Hariom Valmiki in adjoining Raebareli was lynched on October 1 night on the charge of being a “drone thief”. Reports suggested that police found his body on October 2 and sent it for post mortem.

In another incident, a 65-year-old Dalit person Ram Pal was allegedly forced to lick his own urine and clean the steps of the Shitala Mata temple in Lucknow’s Kakori area and surrounding areas after he involuntarily urinated due to illness on the stairs of the temple on October 20.

According to data shared in the Rajya Sabha by Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in April 2025,15368 cases of atrocities against the Scheduled Castes were registered in Uttar Pradesh in 2022, 13146 in 2021 and 12714 in 2020.