First, a disclaimer. Columnists rely largely on published accounts, not personal knowledge, while writing their pieces. It is seldom possible to verify every fact or investigate every incident before the deadline closes in. But sometimes, a story is so disturbing that silence becomes an act of complicity.

On Tuesday this week, when I read about the alleged suicide of a senior IPS officer in the "City Beautiful," Chandigarh, I was shocked. How could a 52-year-old officer with eight more years to superannuation — till May 31, 2033 — end his life so abruptly?

The NDTV report that followed offered only a few grim details: Haryana's Inspector General of Police, Y. Puran Kumar, had shot himself dead at his residence. He left behind an eight-page note naming ten serving and retired senior officers whom he accused of "blatant caste-based discrimination, targeted mental harassment, public humiliation and atrocities."

In criminal jurisprudence, a dying declaration holds great evidentiary value. Courts treat it as a truthful narration of one's last state of mind — though not as gospel truth. Every statement, whether of the victim or the accused, must be corroborated by independent evidence. Yet, what makes a dying declaration different is the context — it is not uttered for advantage, but often out of anguish.

Before moving further, it is necessary to recall what has been reported. Around 1.30 pm on Tuesday, Kumar's daughter found him dead in the basement of their Chandigarh home. He had apparently used his service revolver.

His wife, Amneet P. Kumar, a senior IAS officer, was in Japan as part of a state delegation led by Chief Minister Nayab Saini. She rushed back to Chandigarh, filed a complaint, and sought action against those named in her husband's note — under provisions of abetment of suicide and laws protecting Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Kumar, an engineer by training and a 2001-batch IPS officer, reportedly began facing discrimination after a visit to a temple in Ambala in 2020. The late officer wrote that the harassment started under then-DGP Manoj Yadava and continued under subsequent superiors. He alleged that even earned leave was delayed, preventing him from being with his dying father — a pain he carried till his own last breath. He also mentioned being denied official accommodation, being hounded by anonymous complaints, and being warned by a colleague to "be careful" as senior officers were "geared up to harm" him and his family.

His suicide note, described by his wife as a "document of a broken spirit," paints a picture of systemic alienation. "Justice should not merely be done but seen to be done," she said, demanding accountability for what she called "the cruelty of the powerful."

If true, the allegations point to something far deeper than individual malice. They expose the caste fault-lines that persist even within the country's most elite services — institutions that pride themselves on hierarchy, discipline, and impartiality. Discrimination in such spaces is doubly cruel, for it attacks both dignity and duty.

We often celebrate officers who crack difficult cases or show administrative brilliance, but rarely pause to ask what it means to be a Dalit in khaki — a space still shaped by caste prejudices. If an officer of Kumar's rank and standing could feel cornered to such despair, what must be the plight of those lower down the ladder?

The government must allow an impartial inquiry, not only into the immediate allegations but into the institutional culture that made such humiliation possible. For every caste-related atrocity that happens in the streets, there are quieter forms of cruelty within offices — withheld promotions, casual slurs, subtle exclusions — that escape headlines but wound no less deeply.

As citizens, we owe at least one duty to the dead: that their death should not be in vain. Whether or not the charges stand in court, Kumar's tragedy should awaken the conscience of those who wield power in uniform — and those who oversee them. Silence, after all, is what turns discrimination into destiny.

It would be wrong to see the Chandigarh tragedy in isolation. Its echoes are found in the most unexpected and powerful quarters. The recent shoe attack on the Chief Justice of India, Justice BR Gavai, inside the Supreme Court premises, is a parallel eruption of the same social sickness. Both reveal the uncomfortable truth that caste prejudice continues to thrive even within India's most powerful institutions.

Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati recently remarked that "a position of power is not enough to protect Scheduled Castes." While she used the statement to promote her own party's Ambedkarite credentials, it rings painfully true. Justice Gavai, the second Dalit to occupy the highest judicial post after Justice KG Balakrishnan, is the ultimate symbol of professional achievement within the system.

He rose through decades of service in the judiciary, guided by the same Constitution that guarantees equality and fraternity. Yet, his caste identity remains a lens through which many still see him. The attempt by an advocate to hurl a shoe at him — accompanied by a slogan defending "Sanatan Dharma" — was not merely an act of contempt.

It symbolised the deep unease that caste supremacists feel when a person from a marginalised community occupies the seat of ultimate judicial authority. The fact that this occurred after he assumed the office of CJI makes the insult not just personal but an attack on the very office he holds.

The irony is profound. The Supreme Court is often described as the "Temple of Justice," but when a Dalit presides over it as Chief Justice, the very idea of a temple becomes contested for some. Grotesquely, the shoe-thrower's slogan — "We will not tolerate the insult of Sanatan" — revealed what kind of "Sanatan" he meant: a social order that refuses to tolerate equality at its apex.

The reaction of the establishment was telling. Instead of filing charges under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, as the law clearly mandates for acts of public humiliation against Dalits, the incident was largely treated as a minor disturbance. If such impunity can exist when the nation's highest judge is targeted, what hope can the powerless have?

Mayawati's words thus acquire sharper, more devastating meaning. Positions of power — whether of the Chief Justice of India or a senior Police Inspector General — offer no immunity from caste-based hostility.

The late President KR Narayanan once suggested that the representation of Dalits in the higher judiciary deserved attention. He was vilified for it. India Today even carried an unflattering caricature of him on its cover. Decades later, the question he raised remains unanswered: how representative, really, are India's institutions of its social diversity?

A glance at the list of Supreme Court judges would show that birth still determines access more than merit. The rare few from Dalit or backward backgrounds who break through face subtle ostracism or open hostility. Their success does not challenge the system; it merely exposes its hypocrisy.

The twin events — an IPS officer's death by despair and an attack on the CJI by a self-styled defender of "Sanatan Dharma" — should force a reckoning. They are symptoms of a deeper disease: the corrosion of India's constitutional morality. The tragedy is not that a Dalit officer or the Chief Justice himself can be humiliated. The tragedy is that the nation that once pledged to abolish untouchability continues to practise it in new forms — in police headquarters, courtrooms, and even in the corridors of justice.

This pattern of humiliation is not confined to isolated incidents. It is a recurring motif in the lives of those who dare to ascend. I once read a striking poem about an upper-caste man brought before a Dalit judge whose parents had once been his tenants. As the judge sat high on the bench, the man said bitterly, "Don't be proud of your lofty seat. I've seen your father in an even higher position—climbing my coconut trees."

The lines captured a cruel irony: the man could not reconcile himself to the social transformation that had made the son of his former labourer a dispenser of justice. His words revealed how caste arrogance survives even when power and dignity have visibly changed hands.

This arrogance often manifests in subtle but telling slights. Caste bias in the higher judiciary is not new. When a Dalit judge vacated his office some years ago, a "purification ceremony" was reportedly performed before his successor moved in — a chilling reminder that untouchability still lurks beneath institutional civility.

The first impeachment attempt in India's judicial history was also directed against a Dalit Supreme Court judge, Justice V. Ramaswami. His so-called "offence" was moving from Chennai to Chandigarh when few dared to serve in Punjab after Chief Minister Beant Singh's assassination. Later, he was falsely accused of removing taps, commodes and carpets from his official residence. The move to impeach him collapsed when Dalit MPs across parties saw through the caste bias behind the charges.

Ironically, in the long history of India's judiciary, only one High Court judge has ever been jailed — and he, too, was a Dalit. The pattern speaks louder than any verdict. When Justice CS Karnan criticised the Supreme Court judges, he was punished under the contempt of Court law, but a person who hurled a chappal at the Chief Justice of India was released scot-free. The disparity in response is a stark lesson in how the system protects its own and penalises those who challenge its hidden hierarchies.

This systemic othering is not limited to the judiciary or the police; it permeates the very citadels of learning. Suicides driven by caste discrimination are sadly not new. The case of Rohith Vemula, a Dalit PhD scholar at the University of Hyderabad, remains one of the most searing examples. In January 2016, he ended his life after relentless institutional harassment and social ostracism following his suspension from the university hostel.

Vemula's poignant final letter — declaring that his "birth was a fatal accident" — became a national indictment of caste prejudice in academia. Vemula's death exposed how even the educated spaces of modern India remain chained to ancient hierarchies.

Even acclaimed academics are not immune to this poison. Dr M. Kunjaman, a brilliant economist and the first Dalit after KR Narayanan to secure a first-class first rank in MA Economics in Kerala, chronicled his lifelong experiences of discrimination in his moving autobiography, Ethiru ("Dissent"). Despite holding prestigious academic positions, he was subjected to persistent humiliation and subtle exclusion.

His story revealed how caste operates quietly within universities and research institutions, ensuring that intellectual merit is no shield against social prejudice. Unable to bear the isolation and indignity any longer, Kunjaman ultimately took his own life — a tragic commentary on caste in India's ivory towers. His story and Vemula's form a tragic continuum with that of IG Kumar, proving that the uniform, the robe, and the academic gown are all permeable to the same virulent toxin.

The narrative that emerges is one of a profound and painful contradiction. On the one hand, the Indian state has established frameworks for inclusion and enacted laws for protection. On the other hand, the innermost sanctums of this state—the police headquarters, the courtrooms, the university departments—harbour a social order that actively subverts these very ideals.

The eight-page note left by IG Kumar is more than a suicide note; it is a charge sheet against this betrayal. It is the dying declaration of a man who embodied the state's authority yet was broken by the very prejudices the state is constitutionally mandated to destroy. His death, the attack on Chief Justice Gavai, and the tragic ends of scholars like Vemula and Kunjaman are not disconnected data points. They are eruptions of a deep-seated moral crisis, signalling that the promise of the Constitution remains, for many, a promise deferred.

The ultimate test for India's institutions is not merely to appoint Dalits to high office, but to ensure that the office does not become another site of humiliation, and that the weight of the badge, the robe, or the degree does not become, for them, an unbearable burden. The silence has been broken; the question now is whether anyone in the corridors of power is truly listening.