What the suicide of a Dalit government officer tells us about India’s controversial caste system

Last month, Y Puran Kumar, a 52-year-old senior police officer in India’s Haryana, ended his own life at his residence in the city of Chandigarh, leaving behind a wife and two daughters.

But what initially appeared as a personal tragedy has evolved into a larger debate about caste oppression in India: Kumar belonged to the country’s Dalit community.

According to his suicide note, he ended his life after years of persistent caste-based harassment and humiliation in India’s police force.  His case is an example of how deep-rooted caste oppression and the culture of scapegoating in one of the world’s largest democracies spares no one, even at the top.

Dalits suffer from caste-based discrimination

Caste is an ancient system of rigid social hierarchy in India and it determines many aspects of Indian life and politics.

It can be used to dictate someone’s job, the education and opportunities they receive and even their dietary requirements. According to tradition, whatever caste one is born into is the one they will stay in until the day they die; it is not commonly acceptable to marry outside of it.

Nestled comfortably at the top are the Brahmins, traditionally the priestly caste charged with learning, rituals and scriptural authority. Below them are the Kshatriyas, the warrior and ruling caste; then the Vaishyas, the merchants and traders; and the Shudras, the labouring class, at the bottom.

The Dalits are outside the caste system, deemed so low that they are called the ‘untouchables’ – and they make up around one-sixth of the population. 

A substantial number of Dalits continue to be forced into menial work such as manual scavenging, cleaning dry latrines, sewers or septic tanks because the jobs are considered “unclean” by upper‑caste standards.

In social and public spaces, Dalits may be barred from sharing the same water sources, utensils or dining arrangements.

A tragic sequence of events

Kumar’s wife, Amneet P Kumar, a senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer herself, said her husband had repeatedly complained about caste‑based harassment, humiliation and institutional discrimination by senior officers, including the Haryana director-general of police and Rohtak superintendent of police, who were named in his eight-page-long suicide note.

In the note, recovered from his pocket, he detailed several instances of discrimination.
He wrote that a senior IAS officer did not sanction his earned leave in time, which meant he could not visit his father for his final rites.

He also said his official vehicle was withdrawn in November 2023; his housing and posting entitlements were ignored and his annual appraisal report was loaded with biased comments.

Anonymous and pseudonymous complaints were generated against him to tarnish his reputation, Kumar wrote, adding that senior officers conspired to assign him “non‑existent” posts, delay promotions and arrears, and isolate him professionally.

But Kumar’s repeated complaints were ignored.

His family has since challenged the state government legally, demanding accountability and punishment for senior officials accused of perpetuating a hostile work environment.

The saga took a complex turn when a low-level police officer, closely associated with Kumar’s case, also took his own life some days later. 

In a twist that appears to have come out of a Bollywood flick, this second officer alleged that Kumar was corrupt, complicating the narrative and fuelling rumours that powerful interests are manipulating the truth to protect themselves while blaming the vulnerable.

Political firestorm

The case has drawn widespread condemnation in India. 

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi met Puran Kumar’s family, calling the death a “wrong message to Dalits” that “no matter how successful, intelligent or capable you are, if you are a Dalit, you can be crushed, trampled and thrown away”.

He urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Saini to take strict action, emphasising that the issue reflects systemic caste discrimination and affects all Dalits.

Regional politicians and Dalit rights advocates have also demanded a transparent investigation and accountability for senior officials implicated in the harassment, denouncing the Haryana government for protecting senior officers instead of delivering justice. 

Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema called the death of Y Puran Kumar “a national shame,” saying it showed “that even the highest echelons of public service are not spared from caste bias and injustice”.

Legal safeguards remain weak

“The suicide of IPS Officer Mr Puran Kumar clearly shows the deep-rooted caste-based discrimination that persists within our institutions,” Dr VA Ramesh Nathan, the executive director of the Social Awareness Society for Youth (SASY), an organisation in India that promotes social justice, youth awareness, and the rights of marginalised communities, tells TRT World.

“He was subjected to severe forms of institutional discrimination, mental harassment, humiliation, and caste-based atrocities during his service,” he says. 

Nathan says that despite legal safeguards for marginalised communities, their effective implementation remains weak across states.

While a special investigation team has been formed to probe Kumar’s case, key legal protections under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, a law that aims to prevent hate crimes, harassment and discrimination against Dalits and indigenous groups, were not properly applied, experts say. 

Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) are official terms in India’s Constitution referring to historically oppressed communities once excluded from the caste system.

The absence of a systematic mechanism to prevent caste-based discrimination has led to blatant atrocities, largely due to a lack of political will and accountability, says Dr Nathan.

Caste: the silent underpinning

Experts say Puran Kumar’s death is emblematic of a broader reality: caste continues to shape careers and social status in India despite constitutional guarantees of equality and New Delhi’s attempts to project an image of a rising regional power. 

“Suicides among marginalised caste members are a stark and tragic consequence of deeply ingrained caste prejudice,” says Dr Anderson Jeremiah, a visiting professor on religion and politics at Lancaster University. 

“Despite upward mobility, individuals from Dalit backgrounds are relentlessly subjected to psychological harassment and a pervasive sense of inferiority, driving some to take their own lives,” he tells TRT World. 

The Dalit officer’s suicide, he says, along with overt caste-based killings, proves that casteism remains profoundly entrenched in Indian society, stubbornly resisting decades of efforts toward equality and justice. 

Beena J Pallical, general secretary of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), working to eradicate caste-based discrimination in India, says there is a high level of impunity.

“Numerous instances have occurred where high level officials have faced harassment because of their caste,“ she tells TRT World.

Low representation

Even within India’s vaunted merit-based bureaucracy, Dalits and other marginalised groups remain severely underrepresented in positions of authority. 

While government data suggest that caste-based quotas are met at entry levels, senior roles continue to be dominated by upper castes, revealing a persistent “glass ceiling.”

A parliamentary panel found that among 928 director-level posts and above, only 13 percent were held by SC/ST officers, and at the top secretary level, only 4.8 percent of posts were occupied by officers from marginalised communities.

Recruitment patterns reinforce the imbalance. 

Between 2017 and 2022, only 7.7 percent of newly appointed Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers and 3.8 percent of Indian Police Service (IPS) officers were Dalits or from indigenous communities known as Adivasis — well below their mandated share, National Herald reported.

At the senior bureaucracy level (as of December 2022): of 322 senior bureaucrats in India, only 16 were Dalits. That’s only 5 percent of seats whereas Dalit make up approximately 17 percent of India’s population.

Even where quotas exist, promotion and posting practices often limit upward mobility, leaving many Dalit officers isolated within their own institutions.

The disparity extends beyond bureaucracy. 

For example, in higher education, elite research institutions such as the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) have low Dalit representation. Recent data shows that only 3.1 percent of faculty (20 out of 642) are from SCs and just 1.2 percent (8 out of 642) from STs. 

Puran Kumar’s death is a stark reminder that laws alone cannot undo the weight of caste. As Pallical says, “the only way to stop it is if such cases are brought before courts and a fair judgment is passed to hold the perpetrators accountable.”