In an incident laying bare caste oppression in India, an eight-year-old Dalit boy was allegedly beaten up by an upper-caste man for touching a bucket full of water in Rajasthan's Alwar district.

The incident occurred on March 30 in the Mangleshpur village.

According to local reports, the boy named Chirag was standing near a hand pump as the upper-caste man named Ratiiram Thakur and was filling water in a bucket.

Chirag shifted the bucket to drink water from the hand pump, angering Thakur. “When my son accidentally removed the bucket to drink water, Thakur got angry, beat my son and hurled caste-based slurs at him. When we confronted his family, Thakur’s family threatened to kill us,” Chirag’s father stated in his police complaint.

The Dalit family approached the principal but the latter allegedly shrugged the matter under the carpet. They said that the principal refused to help them saying it was a police matter.

Chirag’s father lodged a police complaint at the Ramgarh police station. “The child is under treatment at a local hospital. A police team has been sent to arrest the accused,” SHO Sawai Singh said.